Yury Nikitin

THE GRAIL OF SIR THOMAS

PART I

Chapter 1

The scorching Saracen sun is burning the endless orange world. An eagle, barely visible from the ground, is motionless high in the blue of the sky, as though nailed to the firmament. The air is sweltering, swaying in translucent waves.

Along the broad trodden road, a huge knight rode a heavy black stallion to the north, jets of overheated air trembling over his iron armor, beads of sweat trickling down his unprotected face. His sky blue eyes, a color never seen here before the arrival of Franks, look defiantly. The knight seems to be seeking for a reason to grab the hilt of his long sword with his gauntleted hand.

The huge stallion kept a steady pace fitting for a long journey. A track of his hoof prints, each as large as a plate, were left on the ground hard as stone, as it had been trodden by myriads of hooves and feet.

A white cloak with an elaborate embroidery of a red cross is flowing from the knight’s armored shoulders. At the left hip, he has a triangular shield, a bit rumpled, with a sword and a lyre upon starry field. On the right, a great two-handed sword is strapped to the saddle, the iron hilt wiped to a shine. A small bag of camping things is bulging on the horseback behind him.

The crusader had a lance pointed upward in his right hand. The spike was glittering with orange, as if he carried a red-hot lump of metal on the top of it. The stallion stepped heavily, looked at his rider askew with a sullen fiery eye. The mounted knight looked like an animated statue, one of those numerous Pagan remnants on the squares of Rome.

The sun was dazzling. The air seemed to be rising from the Hell’s stove waiting for all the infidels and sinners to burn them. Away from the road, there was a puny group of trees, some people in colored, mottled oriental robes lying in the sparse shadow. Three more men found the shadow under a cart, their bare feet stuck out. Some buffalos stood in the middle of a muddy puddle that could pass for a lake in this land. They were as motionless as boulders, with only their snouts out of the mud.

The knight passed by the grove without moving a muscle. It did not befit Sir Thomas Malton of Gisland, the crusader and hero of the capture of Jerusalem, to show his weakness before the eyes of conquered people.

The destrier walked slowly, the road was deserted. Not until midday had Thomas come up with some live creatures — a string of pilgrims. They went afoot, ragged and emaciated, without looking up. Thomas whispered a thanking prayer to Our Lady for his being born a noble knight. Cloaks on these travelers are dirtier than a cloth for people to wipe their shoes on.

The pilgrims, covered with grey road dust, dragged their tired feet on. Their worn-out shoes were falling to pieces even as they went. Every single one looked like a scarecrow or a skeleton in hooded cloak. The dust raised by their feet made Thomas cough, he spurred to leave them behind. None of pilgrims cast a single glance at the magnificent knight: they had seen lots of his sort in the Holy Land. However, the knight had also seen all that lot of travelers, pilgrims, maniacs, dervishes, and even prophets.

The dark wall of forest was approaching. The destrier looked there with hope for rest and cool, but it was still far, so he didn’t bother to mend his pace. The road went across a small village. Thomas adjusted his sword baldric, alerted. Since the army of crusaders had passed there with fire and sword, the resistance of Saracens was broken but the land remained wild. A lone warrior should keep alert here if he doesn’t want his throat cut in the night.

Thomas lowered his visor with a metal clink. His eyes looked closely through the narrow slit in his steel helmet. At that moment, he saw no beauty of the place: only flat earthen roofs, from where some hothead could throw a spear, and tall leafy plane trees, a good hide for archers…

He heard some dogs ahead, barking and growling maliciously. The destrier snorted, laid his ears back without falling out of step. Once Thomas entered the outskirts, he saw a pack of scraggy dogs attacking a pilgrim in some ten steps ahead. Someone was pelting the stranger with sticks and clods of dry earth from behind the earthen wall. Dogs snapped at his rags and legs. He did not even try to protect himself with his thick staff: he could barely stagger along, his legs covered with bloody clots, a fresh red trickle running down his calf. As mongrels smelt blood, their attacks became fiercer. A dog jumped, clawed at the poor man’s back and hung there, pawing his flesh.

Once the pack heard the pounding of hooves, they gave out a louder growl. A dog tried to snap at the stallion’s leg. Thomas hit it with the end of the shaft, the yelping mongrel jumped away. Some Saracen children showed their curly heads up over the fence, hurling sticks and stones at Thomas. Dogs surrounded him, snarling, pouncing, looking ready to attack all together. The destrier shorted anxiously. Thomas reined up to keep the scared horse from bolting. He turned his lance quickly, speared a dog, shook the squealing blood-stained body off and struck another mongrel’s spine.

The speared dog went crawling in the dust, its guts dragging behind and leaving a wet track. The pack crowded around. One mongrel licked the blood, and suddenly all of them attacked the wounded creature. They tangled into a ball, hair flying all around from it, a dog squealed in agony.

The pilgrim leaned on his staff, his face hidden under the hood. Thomas heard his rattling breath, as if some torn bellows were blown nearby.

“Take my stirrup,” Thomas commanded with disgust. “These mad dogs will rip you.”

“Grace… upon you… good sire,” the pilgrim answered in a choked husky voice.

His hand, seeming skeletal to Thomas, appeared from a torn sleeve. The destrier snorted with disgust for the pilgrim’s bad smell.

Thomas hardly kept the stallion from trotting faster. The pilgrim dragged himself along, clinging to the stirrup. He looked a real fright in his loose shredded cloak, definitely off some other man’s back.

When they passed the village, the pilgrim released the stirrup and fell into the dust in exhaustion. His wide-open mouth was gasping for air. His eyes sank down, lips turned pale and bloodless, his breath howled like a cold winter wind in a chimney. “Thank God…”

“Laudetur Jesus Christus,” Thomas muttered piously.

The destrier trotted away hastily. Not until the stranger was left far behind did he take a heavy pace again.

The forest was approaching slowly. The sun was setting. Red and burning it was, like a half-finished hot sword on the anvil. The air was so dry that it scratched the throat. Thomas felt like having been hungry for ages. His tired body ached, his destrier stumbled more and more often.

The road stopped twisting. It seemed to be rushing as fast as it could to the salutary coolness of the green forest where a stream could be found. Thomas rode up to the nearest trees. As branches covered him from the burning sun, his shoulders squared and his back straightened. His warhorse gave a short neigh as he trotted by a narrow path among big stocky trees. Thomas recognized oaks, hornbeams, and elms. The rest were nasty Saracen plants, none of them allowed by Holy Virgin to grow in his blessed Britain.

“We’ll have a rest soon,” Thomas soothed his destrier. “This grove must have a spring. I can feel coolness with all my knightly heart and soul, like a hungry lion!”

He heard a crack in the shrubs ahead. A big thickset soldier tumbled out, like a huge boar, clad in a shining helmet and a breastplate pulled over a dirt-colored leather jacket. He had broad shoulders and wry legs. A wide dagger was on his belt, a huge battleaxe in hands.

The robber looked derisive and sounded stentorian. “A knight on his warhorse! Not the sort to set off without gold. Are you, good sire?”

Three more men jumped out at both sides. Thin and swarthy, clad in ragged Saracen clothes and turbans, they had resentful looks on their faces and curved narrow swords in hands. Those one-edged weapons were named sabers here. The three of them kept their eyes on Thomas, while he only watched the soldier. Definitely a deserter from the great Crusader army, that one was heavy, strong in arms, his splitting axe far more dangerous than light sabers.

The Saracen flung in broken Frank language, “Silver also… good.”

The leader grunted contentedly. “Then we’ll fleece him. Hey, knight! You have a rare chance to leave without a fight.”

Thomas reined up in five steps before the leader who crouched with his eyes fixed on the knight’s hands. The other three set on from the sides.

“All right, go without a fight,” Thomas agreed.

The leader exposed his yellow crooked teeth in a smirk. “You go. Leave everything and go.”

“You can’t take me like that,” Thomas replied tensely. “I’ve been fighting in the Holy Land, I’ve slain hundreds of Saracens…”

“Looks like you dreaded hard fists in Britain, huh?” the leader asked mockingly. “Or maybe in Germany? Get off your horse! Move it, or we’ll help you.”

Thomas looked over the four of them haughtily, reined up with deliberate slowness. His thoughts darted feverishly. He thanked Our Lady for preventing him from taking his armor off, despite the damned heat that was definitely sent from the Hell by Satan.

“I passed the lands of Saracen,” he replied arrogantly. “I will pass here too!”

The deserter raised his axe. Thomas turned left, pulled the heavy sword out and slashed, holding it with one hand The axe staff crunched like a straw. The deserter dashed aside: too late. Thomas felt a start of sword hilt in his fingers, heard a creepy tinkle. The robber’s arm, cut away near the shoulder, plopped down on the ground, still gripping the stick.

The robber uttered a terrible shriek. Thomas turned his shield quickly to the right. A pounding strike in the center of it made his arm numb. The thieves dropped their sabers. The warhorse made two giant leaps, he saw the open road ahead, a sparkling stream…

Something pounced upon him, a strong hand gripped his throat. Thomas swayed, falling down. At the last moment he pulled his feet out of the stirrups, as he was taught to, caught the enemy’s arm, wriggled and collapsed on top of him.

Thomas weighed hundred and ninety pounds, and his armor put him at two hundred and fifty. The robber gasped, blood gushed out of his mouth. Thomas raised himself a little. He heard another tramp fleeing, fell aside, and a short spear crunched into the stunned robber’s chest.

Thomas rose, still a bit stunned by the fall. His helmet had slipped down on his eyes, he set it straight. He had barely heard fast breath behind when someone socked him on head. Stunned, Thomas wheeled round and saw a dim giant figure. The giant swung his arm for a new terrible blow. Thomas grasped he had no sword in hand, nor a solid heavy shield. He jumped aside, his head buzzing, his heavy armor a burden. A dreadful strike froze his shoulder, he heard a crunch of either his bone or his iron armor plate.

The robber swung for the last crushing blow. Thomas’s mind cleared. His enemy turned out to be no giant but a small Saracen, dark and very evil, with bare teeth. A sharp saber was useless against the armored knight but the Saracen had a battleaxe instead, or maybe a cleaver, its blade narrow as a beak. He attacked Thomas hastily, with a hail of quick blows, allowing the knight no time to regain his senses. Thomas backed, trying to shield with forearms and elbows. His head was clearing, his strength coming back, but his armor cracked of violent blows!

Thomas was still choosing the right time when his knees were jogged by something behind. He flipped his hands, trying to keep his feet. The Saracen jumped ahead with a scream, brandished, aiming at the knight’s face. Thomas dropped on his back. He saw a scary flash of steel, heard the axe swish past him and caught it in the air. The blow was hard but Thomas held on to the weapon and rolled aside. Something tinkled under his body, his fingers found the leader’s giant axe. That one had a short staff, like Thor’s hammer.

Thomas had time to rise to his knees. The robber gave him a heavy sider, Thomas got rigid with sharp pain. The robber yelled bestially, his eyes goggled, his mouth spitting. His sharp blade aimed at Thomas’s face, with those hateful eyes looking through the narrow slit: bright blue, as though the very sky was seen through the Frank’s skull.

Thomas seized the axe with left hand, as his right arm hung helpless, stepped to meet a new blow, felt hot spreading within his side, his body contorted with pain. He blocked the axe blade with elbow. The new pain made his teeth clench, but at the same moment he struck back heavily.

The broad steel axe blade clove the Saracen’s head down to his teeth. The blood spurted out powerfully, like splashes from a huge stone thrown into a puddle colored by a sunset.

Thomas dropped his axe, staggered along the road. Stout trees wriggled around like snakes, but Thomas saw his clever stallion who was nibbling grass and fresh leaves hastily, knowing his master would not linger.

Thomas struggled to pick up his shield and sword. Those were incredibly heavy, he dragged them on. His steel armor had a crack on the side, the red oozing out of it. Thomas felt more blood spreading under the armor, soaking his knitted shirt, squelching in his boot.

The stallion stopped eating around, ready to break into a gallop, but the knight stood still, clinging to the saddle. The destrier snorted, turned his head in surprise to sniff Thomas. The knight had lost much blood, everything was going dark before his eyes. With great effort, he hung his sword on the saddle hook, then the shield. He felt too weak to clamber up the saddle but he must have managed it somehow, as later he saw, in half-oblivion, some green branches moving towards him until all the world went dark.

* * *

Cold tickling drops crept down his face. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but grey mist. He could not move. As he groaned, his voice sounded surprisingly hoarse and weak.

Some fingers touched his face. The grey curtain disappeared: it was a wet cloth, now removed from his eyes. He saw a gaunt face over him, it looked like a skull stretched around tightly with dry skin. The man was deathly pale, his massive cheekbones so protruding that they threatened to break the skin. Thomas felt creepy all over. The skull said in a rasping voice, “Gods do not call you, sir.”

Thomas looked at his bony fingers holding the wet cloth. Behind the pilgrim, Thomas saw his own sword, shield, and dagger hanging on a scaly oak, his armor a heap below it. The wind ruffled the hair on his chest, and he realized lying naked to the waist on a pile of twigs, his belly tied up with clean strips. Under them, he felt some thick twigs at his side, which was still burning, pitching, stinging with pain.

“Thank God,” Thomas whispered. His voice broke and hissed, so it sounded like “thanks.” “Who are you?”

“A wonderer,”[1] the pilgrim replied in a dull, lifeless but strong voice.

“A wanderer?” Thomas repeated.

“A wonderer,” the pilgrim said again. “This is…”

Thomas struggled to remain conscious, but the pilgrim’s voice was fading, like a sugarplum while sucked. Finally, it disappeared.

When Thomas came to himself, much later, he ran into the same grey mist, guessed to pull the wet cloth away but put it back the next moment: his forehead was burning terribly, as if sore of hitting against Beelzebub’s hardest pot.

The wonderer hunched, as still as stone, by a small fire. He had taken his cloak off to put Thomas on it, and the knight shuddered with both pity and disgust for the pilgrim’s terrible emaciation. A skeleton clad in skin and wisps of rags. As the fire warmed him, the abominable smell of unwashed body drifted over.

“What’s your name?” Thomas asked in a faint voice. “Where are you from?”

The wanderer turned his head slowly, as if it took him a great effort. His eyes were dark, with reddish sparkles in pupils. “I come from Rus’,”[2] he spoke slowly. “My name is Oleg. I have come to the Holy Land for a feat, as you did.”

Thomas coughed, winced with sharp pain at his wounded side. He felt bruises all over his body where the heavy blows of the robber’s axe had caved his armor in. “Never mind,” Thomas comforted, gasping for breath. “You will have it another way.”

“I had it,” the pilgrim replied in a flat voice. “Everything as I wished.”

Thomas chocked, raised himself on elbows in great astonishment, despite the sharp pain he suffered from that. “But, holy wonderer! You look like a man just out of Saracen prison… and beaten with all the canes of Nile and Euphrates before that!”

“My feat,” the wonderer said faintly.

Thomas lay down. “A feat is to kill a dragon,” he objected wearily. “To storm into the midst of Saracen hosts, kill their best warriors, capture their banner! A feat is to rescue a princess and to hammer her kidnapper into the ground up to his nostrils…” He fell silent, black flies dancing before his eyes.

Oleg the wonderer stirred the crimson coals with a twig, slowly and silently, with a thoughtful look on his face. Suddenly he leaned, snatched something that looked like a small round stone, shifted it to his other palm. “A dozen of baked eggs. You can’t do without food.”

The smell was exciting. Thomas recalled himself riding to the forest. Hungry as a hunter he was, dreaming of food and some rest in the shadow of trees. “You can,” he replied impetuously. “I see it.”

The hermit raked the rest of the eggs out of the fire. Thomas shelled them with trembling fingers. He swallowed half a dozen without sensing their taste. Not until his stomach got full and heavy did he check himself. “Oh, holy wonderer, I’m sorry! I was so hungry…”

“Not holy,” Oleg corrected gently. “There are holy Magi, holy hermits and preceptors, but wonderers are just wonderers.”

He changed the knight’s bandages and examined his wound. In times Thomas passed out in a fever. His side was still burning but the acute pain subsided. “God reckon it to you,” he said clumsily but with proper pride. “You lingered here because of me.”

“I’m in no hurry,” the wonderer comforted. “Your recovery is fast. Stop that, you owe me nothing. You have protected me from those mad dogs. I’m just paying back.”

“Quits then.”

Thomas woke up with fever several more times. Each time Oleg’s face with sad eyes was low over him. Cold drops ran down the knight’s cheeks: Oleg put on his forehead the cloth, so icy cold that Thomas would have removed it if only he was strong enough.

Finally, he fell so fast asleep that he would wake in another dream, and he did it several times before he found himself under the familiar oak, on a thick pile of twigs covered by his cloak. The rest of his clothes were hanging on the tree.

The hermit was sitting in three steps. He watched indifferently the fire burn out, the thin coating of grey spread over coals. Thomas felt his stomach getting anxious, twitching and howling.

Oleg looked up. His sunken eyes flashed red for a moment. “Back to yourself? Your wound is healing. You can get up, slowly.”

“Holy father,” Thomas spoke in a shaky voice. “I have famine mirages as if I were still walking in Saracen sands. I smell roast…”

“I’ve shot a wild boar,” the wonderer said indifferently. “Does your faith forbid you to eat pork?”

“No, it doesn’t!” Thomas cried fervently and coughed. “Not at all!”

He raised himself a little and was surprised by having managed it with only a little prickle in his side. Oleg raked the coals with a sharp twig, hooked a flat brown stone and offered Thomas. The knight grasped that it was no stone but a thoroughly roasted slice of meat, so he took it. The hot juice dripped down, burnt his fingers. He swore, dropped the slice on the ground, picked it, dug his teeth into the meat hungrily, ignoring the blades of grass stuck to it — but it was too hot. He spat it out hastily, threw into his other palm, devouring the slice with his eyes. The juice was pouring off the bite.

“How you did it?” Thomas wondered. “I had no bow. It’s no knightly weapon!”

“I made it,” the wonderer dismissed. “Sticks are everywhere, and the cord of your baldric made a bow string.”

Gnawing at his meat, Thomas watched the wonderer with astonishment. However, the boar might have been never chased before. Or stupid. Or he might have found the animal wounded and dying. “Doesn’t your faith forbid you to kill?”

The wonderer was surprised. “No one stops killing due to their gods. Why should I?”

“Gods?” Thomas said with horror. “You are Pagan!” He dropped his meat again, picked it from the ground, oblivious of grits and dry grass crunching in his teeth.

The wonderer shrugged indifferently. “My faith is kinder. No persecutions. You can put up the pillar or cross for Christ beside our gods. This is the way Khors, Simargl, and even Taran of Celts came to us. And we accepted them.”

“A Pagan!” Thomas repeated with disgust. “Christ is the god of gods! He is supreme!”

“Put him beside,” the wonderer insisted. “If people start sacrificing to him only, we will remove other gods.”

“Christ accepts no sacrifice.”

“What about praises and canticles? Or some fragrant smoke?”

Thomas wished to close his ears, but there were juicy slices of pink meat steaming over charcoal. He smelled their fragrance. The wonderer hooked the slice after slice and offered him. Finally, the twig itself was given to Thomas. He gulped the food down, his voice half-choked. “Why aren’t you eating? I can see the sun through you.”

Oleg hesitated over the last slice sprawled in the crimson coals like a squashed turtle. He shrugged his pointed shoulders with doubt. “I don’t know… I would live on locusts and wild honey for a long time. I would eat leaves and grass. But meat… It rouses a beast in you.”

“Er… Does it? I only feel appetite rousing in me.”

The wonderer curled his pallid lips in a ghost of smile, his teeth as white and sharp as a predator’s. He picked the hot slice with bare hands and did not wince, rolled it in palms, pressed it. His face seemed motionless: Thomas was not good at reading expressions on skulls stretched with skin.

He held his breath when the pilgrim brought the slice to his pale lips. They opened and touched the roast meat, his nostrils trembled, smelling it. Then the wonderer touched it cautiously with teeth.

Thomas did not dare to move while he watched Oleg eat. When the wonderer swallowed the last bit (masticated almost into a gruel), Thomas breathed out with relief. “There you are! Beyond locusts and wild honey!”

The pilgrim turned to him with bewildered eyes, then nodded as he grasped it. “You don’t understand… In my faith, no food is forbidden. It was part of my feat! Self is the hardest to overcome. Fasting sets the power of spirit over body. I was hungry for bloody meat but fed myself with leaves. I desired women but spent my time alone in the cave… Full abstention is what it needs to find the Truth. But the best lot is not to abstain from pleasures but to rule them without them ruling you… Try to get it.”

Thomas didn’t get it. “You still keep your Pagan beliefs, don’t you?” he asked with disappointment.

“So far I do,” the wonderer replied gently. “The power of my spirit is strong enough to keep my flesh from trembling at the sight of meat or any hearty meal. You see, I can have it and remain calm. Thus I can proceed up: from reclusion to the Great Reclusion…”

Thomas did not listen. He had fallen asleep, sated by food.

On the seventh day, the knight tried to mount. Once the stallion took his pace, Thomas got pallor as dead and swung. The wonderer barely had time to catch the knight falling down.

When Thomas came to his senses, he was lying under the same oak. All the day long the wanderer was boiling some stinking broth of roots and herbs in the knight’s helmet, knocking black excrescences down from the birch trees to chop into it. He made Thomas drink the vile bitter mix, with all the hard wing cases and little sharp-clawed legs floating there.

Thomas cursed the names of Beelzebub and Astaroth but drank it. As a noble knight, he knew little about potions, leaving it to lesser men, but he took his new friend’s word for it, as believing is noble and Christian.

The wonderer made potions and decoctions and shot birds skillfully with self-made arrows. Once he shot a young badger. As Thomas ate, his young muscled body, hardened in battles, campaigns, and far journeys, was quickly filled with strength. In times he would get up and listen to his body. The wounded side was aching, but no sharp pain.

“When have you washed yourself last time, holy father?”

“Last month I got caught in a heavy shower,” Oleg replied with a vacant look.

“Oh. Is there any water nearby? I caught a glimpse of a stream while falling from the horseback…”

“It is,” the wonderer confirmed. He became thoughtful, spoke slowly, “Yeah, I have forgotten… The Great Reclusion permits everything that is allowed to others. So I can…”

He came back wet and clean, with his hair plastered to his head, his eyes shining. Thomas watched him in amazement: the wonderer’s hair turned out to be the color of sunset, his face as white as if it were never exposed to the sun. His eyes also had an odd color: green as spring grass, green and sad.

“You are not Saxon, are you?” Thomas wondered.

“I’m Slav. And you? From Britain?”

“Yes. I was born on the banks of Don,” Thomas said with a faraway look. “My castle stands in the bend near the estuary. It is surrounded by woods… and bogs and marshes. Britain is all woods and marshes. The hill under my castle is the only dry place within a hundred of miles. The forest is crowded by aurochs, boars and deer, not to mention badgers and hares. The cries of birds make you go mad. Fish hit your boat with their heads, asking to be caught…”

Oleg nodded. “I have also loved it on Don.”

Thomas wheeled round lively, his eyes glittered. “Have you been there?”

“Dozens of times.”

“Have you seen a high castle of white, white stone? It stands in the bend of the river, has its moat and rampart on the left…”

Oleg shook his head. “I’ve been on the banks of Don in the Eastern Rus’, Palestine, Colchis, Arabia, Gishpaniya, Hellas… Rivers got the name of Don wherever the sons of Scyth came.”

Thomas twitched. “Did those wild Scythians ever conquer Britain?” he asked menacingly.

“I have been to the Holy Land without conquering it, haven’t I? Once Targitai, the great chieftain… or that was Koloksai?..[3] decided to replace Dana, the old goddess of nomads, with Apia, Mother Earth. He wanted to turn nomads into ploughmen at once! Of course, it turned a bloody strife… After the battle, the Old Believers crossed all the Europe and settled on the Tin Islands. They made some old-way altars of colossal stones, dolmens… Have you seen them? No? That’s a pity. The place is beautiful. Stonehenge, that’s the name of it. The Old Believers also gave names to rivers. Don is a Scythian word for river. The city built in the estuary was named London, which means standing in the mouth of the river. Other Scythian word for estuary is ustye. In Rus’, we also have cities named Ust-Izhora, Ust-Ilim or simply Ustug…”[4]

“I’ve never seen any savages there,” Thomas interrupted haughtily. “We Angles live on the banks of Don since the beginning of time. Since God made us there, just after He had created all the world, in six months only!”

“Six days,” the wonderer corrected in a meek voice.

“I know it,” Thomas snarled. “I was afraid a Pagan would not believe it. Six days is really a… And six months is enough time for your gods to do the same if they work altogether!”

Chapter 2

On the tenth day Thomas managed to climb into his armor. Still weak and staggering, he mounted with the wonderer’s help. The restive destrier neighed, tried to take a majestic pace. The wonderer seized the rein hastily, the horse stopped dead. His hand on the rein was as wide as an oar, his arm, bony and gnarled, with some flesh added to it, seemed to be carved of old oak. He became even broader in shoulders, his face a bit livened up, but his eyes still full of anguish.

“Thank God,” Thomas said. “Do your gods allow you to accept rewards?”

“Sir Thomas, I need very little. If no grass, I eat bark. I sleep on bare ground or stones. Goodbye! Good luck to you.”

The knight tried to raise his lance in a salute but failed. He gave a guilty smile instead, his destrier took a steady pace, doing his best not to shake the knight. The wonderer picked his cloak and staff, which he called a crutch, and strolled along the same road slowly, lost in brooding.

The path winded among trees, the open space visible ahead. A squirrel ran along the branch over the walk, saw the strolling man and paused in curiosity, its little teeth made a clank. A big bird flew past him heavily, tried to perch on a branch, but her legs were stiff from long sitting in the nest, so the bird rocked and flapped her wings until her talons regained confidence.

Oleg stepped softly, trying not to disturb that bird, a broody hen. Her belly looked pink and pitiful with bare skin where feathers had been plucked away to warm the nest. The bird was emaciated. She seldom leaves her nest and eats almost nothing, busy with warming and guarding her brood.

A doe passed in twenty steps without fear, followed by a young thin-legged deer. She was alerted, her ears moved. The doe gave Oleg only a guarded look: he did not seem any danger to her. She nuzzled into branches, plucked some fresh leaves and chewed them, her eyes half-closed with languish. The young deer gaped at dragonflies while being fed by his mother.

The trees parted. Oleg plunged into the hot air. The sun pounced upon him, frying him in his cloak. Oleg threw the hood back, exposing head to hot rays.

An ordinary hermit perfects himself in solitude, far from the vanity of the world: in a cave, desert, woods, or mountains. Such hermits number in thousands. In agonizing reflection, they obtain the Truth and bring it into the world. Gautama obtained his Truth in wild woods, Zarathustra secluded himself in mountains, Christ fasted in a desert for forty days, and Mahomet heard Allah’s words while brooding on the top of a lone mountain.

But there is a more difficult sort of reclusion: being among people, dressing, eating, and doing as they do, but living this life with your flesh only, while your soul remains as clean and sublime as it was on the mountain peak. Many tried Great Reclusion, but few succeeded in it!

The road meandered in hills. Twice Oleg saw odd ugly olives with swollen trunks, which would only grow in that land, until the hills parted and the road went out into the open.

Far ahead, there was a lofty fortified castle — a gloomy building of four floors, with a tall watchtower. At that moment the castle was ramparted. It looked swarmed with ants, but those were lots of men: dragging huge stones, tying them round to lift on the wall. Oleg saw their bare backs bustling everywhere and the wet glister of trunks that were barked while dragged.

The road forked: one branch turned to the castle eagerly while another went by. The wonderer passed by the castle without interest: he had seen lots of its sort. Since the Saracen were defeated and Jerusalem with her lands captured, the Frank crusaders fortified hastily, enclosing with walls. Kings vied with each other in bestowing the lands they did not control on their knights, and each knight rushed to build a castle to shelter behind its solid walls.

The castle keep is a tall square tower: wide and massive, formed by huge granite blocks. It is surrounded by smaller buildings, their roofs barely visible over the high rampart. The castle stands in the bend of a river — a common way to ensure better protection. On the other side, there is a deep moat dug from the river and filled with its water. The massive gate is deep in the wall, under the arched cornice, flanked with two small towers where guards would hide.

The wonderer had left the castle far on the left and behind when he heard a fast clatter of hooves approaching from it. Without looking back, he stepped off the road and past the roadside. He knew the wicked men’s habit to whip pedestrians while riding.

Hooves clattered past him. He saw three men on light slim-legged horses. The last rider looked back at him, shouted and stopped. Others reined up reluctantly. The three of them have motley rags on but also sabers and daggers/ One has a bow on his back and a quiver full of feathered arrows by his saddle. Their faces are hungry and evil.

“Hey you,” the back rider cried harshly. “Whose man?”

“A pilgrim, good people,” Oleg replied meekly. “On my way home from the Holy Land.”

“Where’s your home?” the rider demanded. His friends kept their horses who were longing for gallop.

“Rus’.”

The riders exchanged glances. “Never heard of it,” the back one said angrily. “Some made-up place, yeah?”

“Or a tiny kingdom!” a different rider cried.

“Tiny as my nail!”

“Very good,” the back rider resolved. “He’s no one’s man.” He dismounted, prodded Oleg’s chest with a whip handle. Oleg did not stir when the man felt the muscle on his arms and chest efficiently. Then he made Oleg open his mouth and counted his teeth.

The first rider cried impatiently, “You’re ready to grab all sorts of carrion, Ternak! Look! He’s a bag of bones.”

“He’s from Europe,” the second rider added. “Our blood.”

Ternak laughed. “God said He knew no Gentile or Jew. So everyone is equal to Baron’s stone quarry, ha ha! Take him to Murad.”

They surrounded the pilgrim: two with bare sabers, the third with an arrow on the bow string. Oleg looked in their faces of skillful slavers, experts in this gods-awful trade.

“Stretch your hands!” Ternak commanded. “Not ahead! Behind you!”

Oleg crossed his arms behind him submissively. Ternak put a rope on them deftly, tied his hands together. Another rider helped him to lift Oleg on the horseback. Ternak shook his hands off. “So heavy a bag of bones!” he said with surprise. “Abdullah! Take him to Murad and join us.”

Abdullah swore, mounted hastily and galloped to the castle, whooping and holding the bound pilgrim.

They had barely entered the courtyard when a huge creature covered with black hair came out to meet them. He seemed to Oleg half a man, half a beast, with his low forehead, close small eyes, huge massive jaw and absent neck: his boulder-like head was seated on muscular shoulders directly. His bare chest resembled a beer cask, his legs looked as though he spent his whole life seated on that cask, but his arms were as big and thick as tree trunks but covered with thick black hair instead of bark.

The enormous man wiped his hooked fingers, which looked fire-tempered, on a hem of his blood-stained leather apron. He looked the wonderer over with revulsion. “That one a croak on his first day! Kadji damn you, Ternak…”

Oleg was brought to a low stone barn. The door was ajar, the inside smelled of sewage and stiff air. They pushed Oleg forcefully into the dark. His foot found no floor, he went rolling down the stairs and came back to himself on the stone floor covered with wisps of rotten straw.

He heard the door shut and barred upwards. A strong hand touched his shoulder, a mocking voice said in his ear, “Hail to the builder of new world!”

Oleg’s eyes got accustomed to the semi-dark quickly. He discerned about twenty half-naked men along the walls. Each one had a tarnished metal collar round his neck, three were fettered. “Which world?” Oleg asked.

“The new one,” the other man jeered. “Fair one! Christian one! Baron Otset’s castle among barbarity. It’s an outpost of Christian host in the land of Saracen…” He was half-naked, his back in awful swollen wales. His face was crossed by a lacerated crimson wale, his left eye swollen.

Oleg sat up, rubbed his numb hands. “I heard… there’s a stone quarry?”

The man grinned, baring sharp stubs of front teeth. His gums were bleeding. “Ever worked stone?”

Oleg nodded, still looking around. If the man wants to see the novice frightened, he will be disappointed. Pilgrims see much in their travels.

“A pilgrim?” Oleg nodded again at that. The stranger went on, “Half pilgrims here. Baron gives us a chance to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. For him, definitely. The castle’s done, now the wall raised… My name’s Yarlat.”

“I’m Oleg. From Rus’.”

“Is it somewhere in Hyperborea?”[5]

In the next morning Oleg was brought to the forge. Two strong warriors put an iron ring around his neck. The forger was skillful and fast to join the metal ends and rivet them together. The skin on Oleg’s throat got burnt a bit.

The guard made a strong slap on his back. “I love pilgrims! Humble, accepting. Other pigheaded. Yesterday two of ‘em fed to dogs alive.”

The collar was burning hot, slow to cool. The guards led Oleg through the main gate outside. In half a mile from the castle, there was a pit large enough to contain two or three such castles. Fine sharp dust was rising from it. Oleg heard heavy blows of iron on stone.

The guard led Oleg up to the brink, pointed at a wooden ladder. “Get down! No pick for you, drag stone out. The foreman show you in.”

Down in the pit, half-naked men were pounding rocks with heavy picks, making holes in the stone, driving wooden stakes into the holes and watering. The wet swollen wood would break stone. The broken boulders were tied round with ropes and lifted up.

The foreman frowned at his new slave. “You drag broken stone. To that wall. On top only those won’t try to escape. We don’t know if you will.”

Silently, Oleg gripped a sparkling colored edge of the cut-off boulder. The black-bearded man who took it by another side told him through gritted teeth, “Don’t be idle, but don’t work fingers to bone. Or you won’t live till evening!”

All the forenoon they rolled or dragged stones to the wall. Rope ends were thrown down from above, Oleg and the black-bearded man called Shaggy tied the stones round, dawdling with knots to extend the moments of rest. Then boulders were lifted with poignant slowness, their sharp edges scratched the stone wall, the crumbs of granite fell down.

After a brief lunchtime, when each slave was given a dried fish and a slice of bread, Oleg was told to drive the wooden wedges. Others were watering. The slab of stone underfoot was crackling and groaning when Oleg felt a strange strain in it. Next to him, two moaning slaves were rolling a broken-off boulder with long poles.

“Step aside,” Oleg warned them. “Or you may be injured.”

The slaves looked bewildered. The foreman gave him a sharp look, then suddenly barked at them, “Get away!” The slaves flew up, like birds flushed. The huge slab gave a crack. A boulder shot up as if hurled by catapult and ploughed the dry rocky ground two steps long. Oleg stood on the very edge of the larger slab. The foreman kept his eyes on the novice, his mouth twisted. “You know stone? Good… Two fools owe to you.”

The slab was broken like an overripe watermelon: its inside gleaming red with black grains, lined from top to bottom with straight grooves, water-swollen wedges stuck in them.

Oleg picked up his excessively heavy hammer. Slaves moved around like half-dead men, their eyes lackluster. His heart wrung with guilt: he still had not found the Truth to rescue them.

There’s nothing truly great about the one who lifted himself from slavery to the emperor’s throne, as many did. Oleg used to know Upravda, a blue-eyed shepherd who left sheep herding in Carpathian Mountains for the throne in Constantinople. He translated his Slavic name, which meant rule, governance, and law, into Latin as Justinian to mean the same.[6] The word justice, derived from it, spread in Latin and other tongues. He had done much, that fair-haired shepherd, though the throne was prepared and given to him by his uncle Justin, once also a shepherd in Carpathians. But even the most powerful emperor can’t find a way for happiness. For salvation, as the young Christian faith puts it.

By evening he was hardly able to drag his feet along. The hammer was dropping out of his hands, twice he escaped falling boulders only by miracle. Covered with stone crumbs, dripping with sweat, he could barely hear, through the buzz in his ears, the foreman shout for everyone to finish work and get out.

The exhausted workers rushed to the rope ladders dropped from above, where the guards’ swords rang and glittered with bare steel. Oleg lingered. His breath burst out in rattles, his legs quivered.

The foreman whipped him. “Move it!” he bellowed. “You have to be in before dark!”

Someone helped Oleg up to his feet. The guards above struggled to keep their mad dogs who pawed the ground, reaching for slaves, and clanked their scary sharp teeth.

The foreman shoved Oleg into the barn, both collapsed on the dirty floor. Once the gate was slammed behind them, its folds started to shake. Oleg heard scratching, creepy howls. A thick paw, as large as a bear’s, tried to squeeze under the gate.

Oleg turned on his back. The foreman shook his head. “You endure. No wail… A stoic?”

Oleg shook his head slowly. “It’s just puny body suffering. I am free.”

The foreman pulled a mocking face. “But you’re set in this puny body, aren’t you? And can’t leave it. It’s your body if I get it right!”

“My soul is desolated. How can I put body first? Mark Aurelius was right, though he was an Emperor. He said man has nothing but his soul.”

“What if body dies? Of this work?”

“Here I’m fed better than I was… in my cave. I get less tired than while I worked to master my body with spirit.”

The foreman nodded, with no further interest in the novice. For previous three years, he had met different people in the stone quarry: pious men, pilgrims, and stoics, men of many countries and religions. He had taught ascetics and hermits who would only wear hefty chains and mutter prayers to break stone. His main concern was to reveal a man eager to riot or escape. That one was neither: he, a foreman for three years, could sense it from a mile away.

* * *

It was the second week of Oleg’s breaking stone and dragging heavy boulders. He gained some muscle, though he still looked gaunt and bony as against others. He was a welcome workmate: never shirking, ready to take the worst part of it, eager to help.

Once on his way back to the barn he heard a man swear and a lash whistle. A big man was crucified on an oaken cross, his clothes torn off and scattered about the yard. A Saracen in a huge green turban, naked to his waist, with sugar-white teeth bared in malice, was lashing the poor man with delight: spinning the lash over his head, hurling it down with a whistle, each slash meant to break the skin as deep as possible. The poor man’s back was lined with crimson wales. Bitter buzzy flies were dropping on it to lick his blood and ichor before a new lash.

The foreman nudged Oleg as he walked. “A nobleman,” he said with a frown, “They’d have the likes of us nailed, and he’s just bound! Held for ransom.”

“Who is he?” Oleg asked aloofly.

“A knight errant. Or maybe just a returnee from the Holy Land. Not every knight as lucky as our Baron! Many got their mouth watered and that’s all. Now glad to get home alive but scatter their bones on the way…”

They were the last to enter the barn. Guards prodded them with thick ends of spears and barred the door. Thomas Malton, Oleg recalled. An arrogant knight. A boy in the appearance of a man grown, his body in its prime, but his soul still a bud.

* * *

In his third week in the stone pit, Oleg saw a violently bashed man nearby: half-naked, his neck in the iron collar, his legs chained. It took Oleg some time to recognize him as Thomas and just a moment to forget it. He worked hard, but his thought was free to shrink deep into the soul, so he was searching the Real World desperately for the answers to the questions that tormented him while in the other world his mortal body, along with other two-legged animals, would drive wedges, raise a heavy hammer, drag boulders.

Suddenly he heard a hoarse voice nearby. “Wonderer? Er… Sir Oleg?”

He saw Thomas’s face: dripping with sweat, thinned, his southern tan gone. In the clatter of picks around, no one was looking in their side. “Yes, Sir Thomas, that’s me,” Oleg replied slowly. He was still in another world.

“I didn’t recognize you at once. This work did good for you! You got stronger, put some muscle on… Are you going to stay?”

“I can speak to gods anywhere,” Oleg said indifferently.

They heard a foreman’s warning shout. Cursing, Thomas brought his pick down on the rock, the stone fragments flew high. A cloud of dust raised and made everyone look alike. In the commotion Oleg lost the sight of Thomas, but in the evening the knight found him again. “I’ve changed with the man you worked with,” he whispered.

“We’re all men,” said Oleg indifferently. “All humans.”

For a while, Thomas crowbarred a granite boulder, thinking over an answer, then gave a guarded look around and whispered, “No men here but slaves! Does it befit you, a freeborn…”

“Slaves are men,” Oleg interrupted.

“Not men like us.”

“No one is made a slave by God. Only by people.”

Thomas shook his head angrily, his blue eyes blazed with fury. “Sir wonderer! You are too humble. I want to get out of here. I need help. A bit of help!”

Oleg nodded at the other men’s backs, glistening with sweat.

Thomas waved away angrily. “They’ve died out. But not you! I feel a glimmer in you…”

Oleg looked indifferent. He was driving his crowbar in a narrow slit, crushing the stone. Thomas breathed heavily. His muscular arms raised the pick over his head frequently, his blows cracked rocks like rip nuts. The chain on his ankles clanked miserably.

“You’ll burn out,” Oleg said.

“What?” Thomas wondered.

“Overstrain. Run out of your strength soon.”

“I shan’t linger! If no way out, I… swear on the Heaven and Holy Communion, I’ll smash my head!”

His breath rattled, as he had swallowed much stone dust. His neck was squeezed by the collar, his burnt blisters rubbed till they bled. The glitter in his eyes could belong to a small animal at bay, his fingers trembled. Oleg realized clearly that the handsome knight was not long for this world. At least, for the part of the world where Baron Otset’s castle stood.

“How will you get out?” Oleg asked without interest.

“I don’t know,” Thomas said desperately. “But here I shan’t live till Sunday. I know it. And no one to trust in! Slaves… They’re slaves after all! It’s only you I know. You cured me, and I once saved you from dogs!”

The wonderer raised his arms evenly and strongly, bringing the sharp end of the heavy crowbar down into the crack between boulders. Thomas could almost see other boulders that moved unhurriedly in Oleg’s head, casting a dim glimmer into his impenetrable green eyes.

“But,” the wonderer spoke gently, “people should not be forced, even to their good. If they can’t forget their flesh here, if they’re unhappy because of its suffering… they should be released.”

Thomas jerked his shoulder impatiently. “Damn your wise words! Who will release them?”

“We,” the wonderer replied in the same humble voice.

In the evening Thomas was brought to the common slave barn. None of the exhausted, work-disemboweled men paid any attention to the novice. Thomas made his way to the corner where Oleg was sitting. “You’ve travelled a lot,” he whispered with excitement. “Might have seen more of such pits than I have. Do you see a way to escape?”

“There’s always a way,” Oleg replied softly. “But the collars will give us away… and our rags! We’ll be stopped in the nearest village and handed back. No one would like a quarrel with Baron.”

Thomas nodded. “I think so. And I can’t leave without… some things. I hate to part with my warhorse, my armor and sword, but let the damned Baron have it! But in my saddle bag there is an old copper cup…” He stopped, gave Oleg a searching look.

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” the pilgrim said quietly. “In search of something to dress your wound… Why is it so important?”

“It’s holy,” Thomas whispered. “A sacred thing.”

“Ah,” Oleg said, “ritual. I see. Every our sorcerer used to have a cup on his belt. Back in the times of Targitai, the golden plow, yoke, and cup fell from the sky…”

Thomas hissed angrily. “Don’t you liken holy Christian relics to those Pagan things!”

“Well, well. On the way out, we’ll need the armory first. You put your iron pot on, we take horses and gallop away/”

“I have to smash Baron’s head before!”

“Then we’ll be seized. Speed is the rescue.”

“But the cup must be in his bedroom! He’s no fool to keep it elsewhere. I’d rather die than leave it!”

The wonderer watched him with a strange expression, then sighed, tossed and thrashed heavily in the stone corner. “Man is reckless… Isn’t it a simple Truth?”

“Ho-ly won-de-rer!” Thomas spoke in measured tones. He choked with fury, veins in his neck bulged, the metal collar strangling him like Baron’s iron fingers. “Will you help me?”

The wonderer had big, mild, all-forgiving eyes. They could belong to an icon, a righteous man close to Christ, one of his twelve paladins. “Off chance I shan’t abandon my search of Truth despite… In Great Reclusion, do as others do.”

“Will you help?” Thomas moaned.

“A little,” Oleg replied in a quiet voice. “Don’t expect much.”

Chapter 3

All the next day Thomas stood in the full blaze of the sun tied to a post in the middle of the yard. His clothes were torn off. The servants laughed, threw leftovers at him. The burning Saracen sun was driving him mad. Bugs and flies swarmed his bleeding wounds, his eyes, nostrils and ears, fresh wales on his back. Thomas swore, then roared like a bull until his voice got hoarse and his head dropped on his chest. He could only moan then. His legs gave way, so he hung on the bounds. They cut into his flesh tightly, made it blue.

Oleg hoped Thomas would be brought to the barn, but the night came and the poor knight was still not there. Tired stone-breakers gobbled their meal. Twice they fought near the food caldron for a slice of meat, then everyone collapsed on pitches of rotten hay. Soon Oleg heard snoring, rattling breath, groans of pain.

He listened to the sounds outside, approached the gate. Behind those oaken folds banded with thick iron, two soldiers had to be guarding all the night long. Baron is severe, but are both of them really here?

Without looking at the chink between folds, through which the iron bar could be seen, Oleg grabbed the edge with his left hand, his right one set against the crossbeam. He strained and began to lift the fold, his knuckles scraped against the stone gatepost. The massive hinges creaked faintly, the gate bar moved with a grind.

With gritted teeth, he bent every effort to lift the massive fold, his eyes fixed on the glittering pole coming out slowly of the rusty hinges. The wooden edge almost touched the stone vault.

Suddenly, the pole slid out. Oleg hardly kept the fold in hands. Holding his breath, he put it down carefully and listened. The yard was quiet as the barn was: the heavy sleep had overcome exhausted slaves. As a breath of fresh night air came in through the wide slit, some of them tossed uneasily and groaned.

Oleg squeezed himself quietly between the stone wall and the fold taken off hinges. The broad courtyard looked empty. He heard horses snort in distant stables, their hooves knock on a wooden fence. In the moonlight he saw a tethering post in the middle of the yard.

The castle had its lights on. He caught a glimpse of a man’s figure, big and round-headed, against the curtain in the fourth, topmost floor. In the next window, a woman’s head was seen for a moment, her golden hair lit by a torch from behind looked ominously red, until some long dark hands seized her by white shoulders and pulled away. The silk curtains were drawn at once.

Oleg sneaked in the shadow along the wall. For a moment, it seemed to him that once he had been sneaking the same way, in the same rags, emaciated…

He waved unnecessary thoughts away, picked a stone, tossed it up to feel its weight, sides, roughness. The warden’s stone hut was dark ahead, a drowsy guard sitting on the threshold. Oleg passed by him tip-toe and climbed the wall, clutching at the juts of rough stones.

On the top of the wall, he lay down, lest they see him against the stars, listened. Finally, he heard a faint rustle, as if a leather sole shuffled on top of the wall in three or four steps. The sound did not repeat but Oleg had detected the shadowed guard by it. He took the stone out, weighed it in hand. He had never missed a mark in five steps before.

He ran tip-toe, making no more noise than a moon ray, and saw the guard better: big, broad-shouldered and young, in a glittering helmet and a mail with shimmering iron plates. He leaned on the wall drowsily, with half-closed eyes, but if he raised his head a bit his eyes would have met Oleg’s.

Oleg prepared to hurl the stone. He knew he would not miss but a strange weakness fettered his muscle. A young man is to die… what for? Is it his fault that a runaway slave encountered him? Perhaps he’s an outlaw, the worst kind of man, but he might just as well only happen to be here and soon leave it for a good honest job…

Oleg ran to him noiselessly, tips of his toes barely touched the stone. He punched the helmet, it crunched, the boy went slipping down the wall. Oleg caught him, put down into the corner. The dark blood gushed from under the helmet, spilt hot on his hands. Oleg clenched his teeth. He did not expect this, out of the habit to use violence in his cave. The lad will never come to… I could have thrown the stone, all the same!

Feeling guilty, he took the sword belt off the body, unsheathed the knife and tucked into his belt backwards, in Scythian way. A cloud hid the moon for a moment. He sneaked along briskly, getting used again to the weight of sword on his left.

The yard remained empty, its broad ill-fitted paves and dented stone stairs flooded with moonlight. The walls were formed by solid stone slabs while broken pieces were used to cobble the courtyard. The place was all stone, from top to bottom: the keep, walls, towers, slave cellars, even the yard…

Slave cellars? Thomas must be in another cellar: a torture chamber. Baron must have one. All big lords have those: open and secret, separate for common people and nobles… But where is it?

He stopped dead, his eyes examined the dark stone buildings. Baron built in a hurry to fortify in the unfriendly land, men in his stone quarry dropped like flies, but everything is durable, made for ages… and following a familiar pattern. According to that canon, the torture chamber was placed straight under the keep, for the lord to visit his treasury and cellar with his most dangerous — or expensive — prisoners without stepping outdoors.

Oleg took in the castle at a glance, estimated the thickness of walls, the location of windows and rooms. His intuition pointed at a small guarded window at the ground level. The yard was still empty, the moon covered by a shaggy cloud, so he adjusted the sword belt, ran along the top of the wall and kneeled, ready to slip down into the dark.

Huge inhuman hands emerged from the darkness on his left. Oleg was late to stir away: strong fingers had grasped his neck. He gave no cry of pain and astonishment only because his throat was squeezed. He felt lifted up in the air. His head jerked back almost at the point of breaking the neck. Another monstrous hand hit Oleg’s arm, the one with the sword he managed to draw out despite pain. The sword disappeared, with a brief flash in the moonlight.

His arm got numb of the heavy blow. Through pounding in ears, he listened to hear steel tinkle on the stone but it was quiet as if the sword fell into a haycock. Gasping, he grabbed the fingers on his throat but could not remove them: his right arm was dangling. His was getting weak quickly. With a soft growl, the monster pressed him to the tower wall. The moon came out, and Oleg felt deadly cold, as he found himself in the grasp of a fierce grinning troll!

Wheezing, Oleg kicked the tower wall to push off. He flung away together with his enemy who stopped on the very brisk of the wall, his foot hung off. The monstrous teeth snapped straight before Oleg’s eyes, but the fingers unclenched: the troll had no wish to fall down on the stones, even with prey in his clutch. Staggering, Oleg rubbed his throat, backed two steps and jumped down briskly on the lower cross-wall, visible in the moon light.

His trembling legs failed him. He fell, everything went dark with pain, as his injured arm was pressed down. He rose hastily, gasping still. The troll could have killed him from an ambush, with a sword or a hammer-like fist, but the beast loathed people, he craved to see the agonizing face of a man seeing his death and trembling with fear, to enjoy his agony and terror!

He had barely got up when the troll jumped down to him softly, like a giant cat, although twice as heavy as Oleg. A curved blade glittered in his right hand. Oleg leaned against the wall desperately: a deadlock, but the troll didn’t raise the sword. He could hack Oleg’s head off, slash his body slantwise or down to the waist, but that was too easy death!

Suddenly, Oleg grasped what the troll wanted: to slash his belly open, guts to fall out, death be inevitable, but last long, very long, and the victim to know it coming, to wail in fear, to crawl, with the wet grey tangle of his entrails dragged behind…

He gathered his last strength, pushed off the stone and leapt on the troll, his right foot aimed at the sword paw, his left one — at the groin. The troll stirred, the sword slipped off his finders and went tinkling down the stairs, but Oleg’s left foot missed and kicked the monster’s hip instead. The troll reeled, his blood-colored eyes flashed like burning coals when the wind blows ashes off them. Oleg alerted, fell on his back, defenseless like a baby before a wolf. The troll hung over him, huge and ferocious… and rushed for the blade.

The sword lay a floor below, shimmering like a fish just out of water. The troll stooped for it. Oleg jumped down at him, kicked his back with both feet.

Any man’s spine would have been broken like an overdried splinter, but the troll only collapsed, his body rolled a floor downstairs, with a thunder of bones. Oleg felt cold when he saw a glitter in the black paw — the troll had seized the sword!

Gasping for air, Oleg rushed back to the top of the wall. The cellar where they keep Thomas is straight beneath, but this mad beast on the way! Goodness knows how a troll got to this southern land… A cloud slipped on the moon, and everything went black. Oleg felt his back cold: he could barely tell the narrow passage along the top of the wall apart from the black emptiness. He clenched his fists and ran along the path. His heart sank with every step, as he expected his foot to find abyss…

The castle was an ordinary tangle of walls, towers, stairs, and landings made for defense, good to place catapults and blazing tar barrels at, but Oleg realized with fear that he got lost. He ran to the corner, rounded a watchtower with a sleeping sentinel inside and stopped, trying to figure out where he was.

The clatter of troll’s sharp claws on the stone was approaching, as the monster ran up the narrow stairs. The sword swung in his paw, glimmering in the moonlight. His ears were pointed and upright like a wolf’s, his big white teeth bare and gleaming.

Oleg retreated until he climbed on the observation deck, the highest point of the castle. Over the wooden railing, he saw stars: cold, far, and prickly on the sky as dark as sin, the ground far below in the blackness.

The troll sniffed, raised his head. His grin got broader, he went upstairs in a slower pace, bending slightly: a tight, alerted ball of bestial muscle.

Oleg retreated to the edge of the deck, looked around like an animal at bay. His right arm still ached, fingers bent poorly. The troll ascended slowly, in silence, his eyes fixed on Oleg. The broad curved blade shared the predatory glitter with the monster’s big teeth, the four curved jutting fangs the brightest.

Oleg’s back clung fast into the corner, the railing cracked. The troll climbed on the deck in five steps. Their eyes met. Seeing the runaway fully in his power, the troll grinned with malice. He made a step forward, yellow saliva foamed in the corner of his thick lips. He watched the victim’s face with delight. It was a helpless creature trembling before him, and he wanted to take all the pleasure of it, to the last drop, to revel in fear and awe before taking a life — with regret for impossibility to kill twice, trice, many times — taking it slowly, for the victim to see own death, inescapable and terrible…

The troll raised the sword in right hand, his left one stretched aside, reaching the rails. Oleg hardly took his eyes off the glittering blade. The troll grinned: this time no way for his enemy to escape. Suddenly he tossed the sword to another hand. Oleg’s heart beat faster, but then he looked in the beast’s blazing eyes and realized: the troll has equal use of both arms, he plays with the sword to make his prey liven up for a moment, to plunge it into a deeper agony and terror afterwards.

The rails crackled under Oleg’s weight. He felt poles moving apart. A moment — and I’ll fall down into the cobbled yard. The troll won’t kill with a sword: he’d rather gnaw at his prey to feel warm salty blood on lips, tear the living flesh while the prey writhes, twitches, pushes him away with weakening fingers…

Oleg was fingering a rough pole behind him when his palm found the knife hilt. He flinched. How could he have forgotten it?

Trying to look petrified with fear, he pulled the knife out cautiously, gripped the handle. The troll made one more slow step, his gleaming red eyes almost burnt his prey through.

A crow cried harshly above their heads. The troll shot a glance at it. His eyes returned to his prey at once, but Oleg had time to swing his hand: so fast that he saw only a blurry move himself. The troll gurgled as if he choked with wine, his eyes popped out. The knife was deep in his throat. His monstrous hairy paws convulsed, the sword slipped out, struck against the stone, bounced and stopped.

The troll seized the knife handle, lurched. Oleg saw the blade, dark with blood, in the huge hand, a hole in his throat, blood gushing out like a mountain stream, foaming and steaming in the moonlight. The troll went staggering to Oleg, his hand with the knife advanced, his eyes such a bright blaze that Oleg could see nothing but those red fires.

Keeping an eye on the troll, Oleg picked the sword, jumped into the corner. For a moment they stood, devouring each other with eyes. Oleg raised the sword: heavy, sharp, with a curved blade. The troll reeled but kept walking, a knife in his hand stretched far ahead. He was wild, wheezing, covered with blood.

Oleg did not strike — the troll collapsed at his feet, sprawled like a cut-down tree.

* * *

Thomas hung in his chains, feeble and half-conscious, when he heard the door bar click, then a soft whisper. “Sir Thomas! Don’t sock me on head!”

A familiar figure slipped into, setting the door ajar. Thomas jerked his head up, peered at the wonderer, unable to believe his eyes: Oleg had a sword on his belt and a knife in hand. He stopped in the middle of the torture chamber, giving his eyes time to accommodate to the fading light of the only torch. “Oh… You seem to have been socked.”

He approached, seized the hooks on which the tormented knight was hanging. The muscle bulged on his shoulders. Oleg sniffed, pulled — and the iron pin creaked out of the wall. Thomas could not believe his eyes, but the wonderer, breathing heavily near his left ear, tugged another pin — and Thomas was free.

The small room smelled of burning, the air was stiff. A wall was covered with hooks, pincers, saws, iron rods used to pierce a leg through, special tongs for tooth wrenching and lip ripping. The corner housed a small forge and a pile of firewood. Wincing, Thomas rubbed his swollen wrists. “Was there a guard?”

“There is,” the wonderer said in a dull, almost sleepy voice. He did not seem to mind the thick iron ring chaffing his neck. The deeply curved writing on it, visible in the semi-dark, said the slave belonged to Baron Otset. Oleg looked around the chamber sadly. A bunch of keys that had once been on the jailer’s belt jingled in hand. “Can you walk?” he asked softly.

“My bones intact,” Thomas informed bitterly, with waking hope in his voice. “I’m burnt and beaten, that’s all. I only mind I didn’t hit back this time!” He snatched at his slave collar violently: that damned thing was burning him days and nights.

The wonderer glanced back at him from the door. Thomas followed him out, screwing of bright light: there were two torches lit in the passage. The wonderer glided along as a shadow. On the go he threw the bunch of keys under a heavy gate, with a wide stream of sewage running out from under it. There was a startled cry, a trample of bare feet.

“Runaway slaves there,” Thomas explained unnecessarily. “You knew it?”

“It’s the same everywhere. All the same…”

Thomas struggled to keep up but suddenly checked himself. “Wait! We won’t get out! At night the yard is guarded by a troll. I don’t know where he came from…”

“You could have warned before,” the wonderer grumbled. “His watch has ended.”

Thomas sneaked after him, clutching at the wall. The answer puzzled him. He could barely keep up with Oleg: stiff legs were reluctant to obey.

“Let’s go to stables,” the wonderer said. They stopped. “Your horse is there.”

“I can’t leave the cup!” Thomas replied, looking aside.

The wonderer shrugged indifferently. “Hurry then. Dawn is at hand.”

“And you?”

“I’ll move on my way with a prayer. Fights and bloodshed are none of my business.”

The corridor curved. In twenty steps there was a massive door to the courtyard. Beside it, a bulky soldier sat on a keg, his back rested on the wall. His helmet, iron plates on his shoulders and knees, and the broad blade of his axe were gleaming red in the torchlight. Sometimes his red lips opened sleepily, but the guard stirred at once, cast a suspicious look around, and got drowsy again. His black hair was shoulder-long. He had a thick leather armor under his iron plates, an axe across his laps, a gleaming shield leaned against the wall next to him.

Hiding in the shadow, they watched him. Thomas clenched and unclenched his fists. “If I got this bumpkin… But he’ll bellow as a bull before I reach him!”

With obvious displeasure on his face, the wonderer pulled his knife out, took it by sharp point, as if to weigh it, then by handle. Thomas watched in confusion. The wonderer swung, his hand made a sudden brief and swift move. A faint lightning flashed in the smoky air along the corridor, died out at once. The sleeping guard stopped quivering, his head dropped, his chin set against his chest.

Thomas snatched the sword from the wonderer’s hand, rushed forward. The knife was stuck in the guard’s head beside ear, two thin dark trickles running down. The wonderer pulled the knife out on the run, picked the guard’s axe. He stopped at the door, wiped the bloody blade with a cloth. “We get out?”

Thomas hardly took his astonished eyes from the pilgrim’s pale face. “What? Ah! The armory must be on the right, sir wonderer.”

“Been there?”

“No. But if I were building…”

The armory door was in ten steps, guarded by two men. Thomas noticed that the wonderer clenched his fists powerlessly and whispered something of no more killing, please, for we are all strangers in the night, or some nonsense like that.

The guard seated on a wooden block was dozing, his legs jerked. Another one was walking to and fro, yawning, rubbing his eyes with fists.

The sitting guard gave a loud snore, his legs stretched across the passage. Irritated, his partner intended to kick him, but the sleeping man looked like a bull, so the guard thought better and went away to the opposite wall, with a small guarded window in it. He jumped, grabbed the rods with both hands and pulled his face up to the fresh air jet.

“Day is breaking,” the guard said, then jumped down and turned. He saw a flash, a violent blow shook his body. Oleg caught him in the fall, put on the floor gently. He felt a draught, as Thomas galloped by like a horse. There came a thump, as if a log were axed.

Oleg flung the armory door open, glanced back at Thomas with reproach. The knight’s eyes glittered with joy. “Why kill him?” Oleg spoke sadly. “He’s no enemy.”

“And what you did?” Thomas wondered.

“Just stunned.”

“That’s why his brain splashed on walls!”

The armory was a big room with low ceiling, full of trunks, chests, sabers, daggers and other weapons. Along the walls, there were shields, pieces of armor, and flexible lines of riveted steel, all lying in heaps. Small mail rings shimmered like fish, dusty helmets stood in a row like overturned pots.

Thomas rushed into the far corner, rummaged there avidly, scattering the pieces. “That’s my armor!” he whispered.

His hands were trembling, his blue eyes in tears. He hurried to pull the heavy steel on, his fingers slid off. “Sir wonderer,” he begged in a whisper. “Don’t take it as impudence… Please help me with clasps on my back! The knight’s trouble is that sometimes he can’t array himself in!”

In a moment, a half-naked stonemason with an angry face was concealed within the gleaming steel. The armor was fitting but the slave collar did not want to go inside, Thomas pushed it in with a fist. His blue eyes looked at Oleg through a narrow slit, the rest of his body covered with iron.

Thomas stooped easily — pieces of his armor slid apart in particular places to allow it — seized his triangle shield, snatched the cross-handled sword from the wall. “Forgive me, sir wonderer. Though you are no highborn but not a servant either. I shouldn’t have asked you to clasp me as if you were a squire…”

“Stop it,” the wonderer winced. “You’d better hurry. Do you hear it?”

There was a noise in the yard: clamor, furious barking of dogs, then a desperate squeal. “Slaves picked the keys,” Oleg said. “It took them so much time… Now they’ll smash and plunder all around, break into the wine cellar… and distract the guards.”

They hurried up the steep stairs, climbed on an open landing. It was dark below, the night ripped by torchlight, clang of steel, and shouts of men, but the sky was going lighter, stars fading. They felt a cool morning breeze.

They saw a watchtower on the left and the wall stretching along from it. In three or four steps, there was a lower wall fencing a corner off the yard. A guard in light armor was walking on the top of that wall, his cold hands under his arms, a sword and a knife on his belt. He cast uncaring glances below, where the torchlights rushed and men shouted.

Thomas cursed: the guard was unattainable on that side-by-side wall. The soldier raised his head and saw an armored knight and a half-naked man, lean but broad-shouldered, both with swords. His eyes popped out, his chest started rising, as he took in the air for a loud cry.

Thomas felt some hot thing rush past him. The next moment, he saw the wonderer pouncing upon the guard: he jumped legs first, and they crossed around the soldier’s neck with such strength that Thomas heard the crunch of broken bones. Both slid down the wall: the guard with his eyes popped and the half-naked man on his shoulders. At the last moment, the wonderer clutched at the wall edge. His legs came apart, the limp dead body slipped down.

Thomas could hardly believe his eyes: he had never seen such a fight practice. He heard a faint slap below, as if a sack of wet linen were thrown down on cobbles. The wonderer pulled himself up the wall, shook his fist at Thomas. “Damn you, knight! I don’t stop killing!”

“How’d you get back here?” Thomas cried anxiously.

“I’m not going to!” Oleg shouted back angrily. “I’m going to stables, to horses. And you want Baron? His chambers are just beneath you!” He rushed along the wall to the stairs that led down into the yard.

Thomas came to his senses, chose the shortest cut, although dodging and twisting, built in a way to help defend the castle. He ran by the inclined edge. Men in the yard below cried louder with joy, torchlights rushed faster. He heard a crack of wood, a clang of steel.

A guard, as lanky as a milestone, stood half-asleep beside an ornate door. He raised a gleaming spear. Thomas crushed him with a brisk strike of gauntleted fist, thrust the door with his shoulder. The wood cracked, the massive bar flew off its hinges with an ear-grating screech of iron, the folds flung open.

Thomas broke into the ornate room as an avalanche. It was a bedroom, as large as a hall, low-vaulted, lit by a huge fireplace that could burn a whole tree. A crooked old man was sitting beside the fire, throwing thick billets in it. In the middle of the room, there was a high bed covered with a bright canopy and curtained by silk.

Running across the bedroom, Thomas tore the bed curtains away, then stopped and turned, his sword and shield ready for battle. On the two puffy pillows of the luxurious bed, he saw two heads: one female, her golden hair lit the room when Thomas ripped the curtain away, and one male, black as a firebrand and big as a caldron.

Baron was asleep, his mighty arms stretched behind his head. He had a tiny forehead, overhanging brows, a short flattened nose with huge nostrils, and a heavy back-slanted jaw. Thomas felt something odd in his face but he had no time to think it over: Baron turned in his sleep, his nails scratched his strong chest with black bestial hair. The blanket slipped off, and the nightgown on the golden-haired woman opened wide. Thomas started back, blurred by the tender whiteness of her skin. He had time to see her alabaster breast, perfect in shape, crowned with a bright-red rose bud.

She woke up, her blue innocent eyes opened wide in astonishment, as well as her small coral mouth. Amazed, she looked into the eyes of the same blue that watched her through a narrow visor slit.

Thomas struggled to take his eyes off her. His fury, which had been boiling up for all the days of his shameful captivity, nearly leaked down all into some folds and cracks of his soul.

He grabbed Baron’s naked shoulder, squeezed it with gauntleted hand. “Get up! The Hell’s tired waiting.”

Chapter 4

Baron turned his head quickly, took in the room in a tenacious glance. Thomas swayed his sword ominously, throwing crimson lights into Baron’s eyes. On the wall behind Thomas, there hung a huge axe with fanciful hooks on butt. The old man raked billets in the burning fireplace. He was shaking, despite sitting near the fire. He paid no attention to Thomas, nor to his master.

Thomas caught Baron’s sight and nodded. “Take it!”

Baron stood upright: dark, massive, covered with hair like a forest animal. Thomas noticed something odd again, his heart wrung with alarm. Baron’s legs were too short, his arms huge and muscular, a strange head seated straight on his sloping shoulders… “And the rest?” Baron bellowed.

Thomas cast a glance around. Baron’s armor must be in another room. Send him for it — and he brings a dozen of guards! “No,” Thomas said and raised his sword.

Baron roared, tried to run away through the smashed door, but Thomas brandished his sword and nearly slashed the enemy’s side open. With a creepy howl, Baron snatched the axe from the wall, wheeled round abruptly to the armored knight.

He hold the axe with both hands at the knee level, his eyes fixed on the unexpected foe. Thomas suddenly felt weak: Baron’s eyes had no pupils, no irises, but they were not all white as a blind man’s — they were fiery red! Their blood-colored light was going brighter, blazing up as if the Hell’s fire, from which this monster had emerged, shone through his skull.

“You die!” Baron roared with a creepy move of his jaw: it was getting heavier before Thomas’s eyes, transforming, covering with a bone shell.

“All men die,” Thomas replied as firmly as he could: his voice tried to break into a frightened squeak. “But you — now.”

He brandished the sword. Baron raised his axe, parried a blow. The sword blade hit the axe handle. Thomas expected the sword to cut it as a twig, to slash the beast down to the waist, but the blade bounced off. Thomas’s hands were burnt with sharp pain. He heard a roaring laughter — the axe handle had only the looks of wood — and fell on his back to dodge a blow.

In the host of Duke Gottfried, Thomas was the only knight who could in his full armor fall on his back, roll over his head, and get up to his feet. This skill saved his life again. The dreadful axe blade cut the air so close to his face that Thomas felt the wind. Baron stepped forward in a haste to finish his enemy off while he was down. If he knew Thomas, he could have done it in time — but he didn’t, and Thomas stood upright, breathing heavily. His shield remained on the floor, and Thomas kicked it aside, gripped the long sword hilt with both hands. His eyes, also burning, were fixed on Baron.

Their eyes met in a fierce duel: bright blue, burning with the bitter cold of icy North, against red inhuman… Baron’s body was transforming: his shoulders got even broader and stronger, his mouth turned into dreadful jaws. They opened, four hideous fangs came out. The monster breathed heavily, as if he, not Thomas, had been running in heavy armor. Thomas heard ferocious shouts from the yard, steel clanking and clanging, horses neighing.

“Die,” the turnskin croaked. He went to Thomas, shifting his axe between hands. It had a long sharp double hook on the butt, a jagged spear blade on its back. They clashed. Thomas shuddered: the troll’s face, covered with black hair, was close, with its wide wrenched nostrils and crimson eyes under the thick bone cornice. The turnskin’s sharp-toothed jaws opened wide. Thomas shrunk back and that saved him: huge teeth clanged near his visor, all but snapped at it. Thomas pushed away with the handle, felt muscle hard as wood under the troll’s thick hair.

Troll brought his axe down, aiming at the shiny helmet. Thomas parried, but his arms went numb of a terrible blow, he barely kept his feet. The woman sat up on the bed, her eyes wide open in silent astonishment, her gaze shifting between the armored knight and the troll, as though choosing the one to stake on. Thomas retreated, struggling to parry the violent blows, each one almost knocking the sword out of numb fingers. The troll howled, breathed heavily, his sharp-pointed ears moved like an animal’s.

The flames in the fireplace blazed up. The old man poked them, almost falling face first into the fire. Trembling, he shoved his hands now in his bosom, now straight into the fire. His flabby neck got covered with goose bumps. He never looked back, though Thomas and the troll all but stumbled over his hunched figure, cast mighty clanging hand-numbing blows just over his head.

Thomas clenched his teeth — it was shameful and dangerous to retreat — and lunged. The troll parried only half of the unexpected blow. The sword point stabbed his face near the eyebrow, slashed his cheek down in two. Blood gushed out forcefully, the troll started back, apparently stunned: the sword had slashed his thick eyebrow bone. The huge hand jerked up to wipe the blood. Hastily, Thomas struck twice. The troll staggered but blunted his attacks, the axe handle in both hands. Thomas slashed quickly, with all his strength, giving time to recover — but the foe was recovering. The crimson blaze in his eyes turned acid yellow.

The troll snarled hoarsely, his breath stinky and husky, his enormous fangs glittering. Suddenly he gripped the blunt end of the axe with both hands. The flash of steel seemed to have lit the whole room. The blow was dreadful, irresistible. Thomas did not try to parry: he simply stepped to the left at the last moment. With a smack, the blade hacked handle-deep into the oaken floor. Thomas cast a mighty blow with the sword in both hands like a spear. The sword point pierced the troll’s skin, as thick as a double-leather armor, the blade went two palms deep into the flesh.

The castle shuddered of the terrible roar. A shield dropped from the wall, huge antlers fell besides. The flames clung to the coals in fear, the woman stood straight. The troll bent with pain, the sword handle was pulled out from Thomas’s hands.

Thomas backed hastily, glanced around but saw nothing to use as a weapon nearby. The troll’s yellow eyes, blazing with fury, were fixed on him. The sword was stuck in his side as though in wood! The troll pulled the axe handle and twisted: it had stuck too deeply. He pulled with all his might. The thick black blood finally gushed from his wound, fizzing, foaming, falling his thick hair as a wind falls trees. The axe was still there. The troll set his foot firmly, gave a dreadful roar. Monstrous muscles bulged on his back, the blade screeched, coming out from the thick wood, and the axe was in the troll’s hands!

Thomas backed until his back touched the wall. He was shaking. The dreadful troll was coming on him, raising his axe for the final blow. The sword, still stuck in his side, leaned to the floor, barely keeping in, blood gushed over the handle and down by the blade. A trail of bloody inhuman footprints was left behind.

His dreadful eyes looked at Thomas, blazing with terrible white fire. Monstrous arms lifted the heavy ax overhead. Thomas sprawled on the wall. He could not take his eyes off the monster’s ones — and those suddenly darkened, red sparkles disseminating quickly in the black. The axe slipped off, hit the troll’s head with its butt, and thundered down on the stone. The troll reeled forward. Thomas had barely moved away when the huge bestial body collapsed on the wall. The troll’s claws scratched deep furrows in the stone, he slid down to the floor.

Thomas seized the sword handle briskly, his palm felt hot and sticky. He set his foot against the massive body and pulled. The sword came out easily as if pushed away by a hot spurt of blood. Thomas wiped the blade on the hairy back as clean as he could. The troll was still twitching, all four paws scratched the stone floor with a creepy sound.

Thomas heard an astonished voice. “I would have never believed it!”

The woman jumped off the bed, a white kerchief with a golden monogram fluttering in hand, like a scared butterfly. Thomas stood like a statue, with the blooded sword. She shoved the kerchief into his trembling hands, threw her arms around his head, snuggled up to him, frightened, tender like a morning breeze, like a light cloud. Thomas dropped his sword, stood there like a fool, not daring to stain the kerchief, though she gave it for him to wipe the blood off his fingers. He felt a keen regret that his iron armor was between their bodies.

Shivering, she clung to him so forcefully that she could have knocked Thomas down if he was not pressed to the wall. Hating his armor, Thomas muttered with embarrassment, “You are free, my lady!”

“Yes, yes, thank you very much indeed, my miraculous rescuer!”

“Please don’t look at the beast. It’s an awful sight for you…”

She embraced his neck with her sugar-white hands, raised her pretty head. Her beautiful face, shining with hope, was just before Thomas’s eyes, and her eyes glimmered with happiness. Her voice was so tender and melodious that his heart ached. “It’s awful! I didn’t know he was mortal. When he slew my husband, Baron Otset, and took his appearance… A monster! False damned monster! He deceived me. I was always deceived, by everyone! Baron lied…”

“A monster,” Thomas muttered. The sword dropped from his hand again, his muscle relaxed. He embraced the tender woman’s shoulders clumsily, fearing to stain her golden hair with blood. “But now he’s dead.”

“My dear Baron,” she whispered. Her magnificent blue eyes looked in the narrow slit of his helmet with a plead. “I mean, my mysterious knight! You won’t leave a weak woman without protection, will you?”

“My honor can’t allow it!” Thomas replied with knightly ardor. “Just your word — and I’ll do everything for you not to be worried!”

Her beautiful arms were still embracing him, her high breasts waved while pressed to his steel armor. “Your nobility has… won me!” she exclaimed with emotion. “And my castle, its lands, stone quarries and slaves in addition. Behind Baron… the last and the one before him… I felt as safe as behind a stone wall. But now I’m so afraid, so alone! You must become my new stone wall, brave knight! A wall behind which my faint scared heart will find refuge!”

Thomas opened his mouth and closed it, blood pounded louder in his temples. He heard a distant ringing in ears. Her deep pupils were expanding, filling all the world. He felt dimly that her tender hands pulled the helmet off his head neatly, her deft fingers unclasped the broad steel plates, drawing the mighty but rigid knight out of his armor, like a shelled oyster.

Thomas tried to shake the overcoming weakness off. He was not only weary after a hard battle: some strange sluggishness added to it. His thoughts tangled — maybe a consequence of the header. Her immense begging eyes screened all the world off. His lungs were crackling, he coughed, spat a clot of blood out. He felt a stitch in his side as if an arrowhead stuck there. Thomas had a vague memory of the hard blow landed there. His armor endured, but a couple of ribs may have been broken like straws.

Far away, there were voices, the crash of the furniture turned upside down. The sound of heavy footsteps approached, the bedroom door cracked open on its single hinge. Thomas heard a loud indignant cry. “I thought him dead! And he’s — what a shame! — pleasing his insatiate lust!”

He caught a glimpse of the wonderer’s angry face in the mist . Oleg was grim as a black rock, his eyes unfriendly, his breath fast. He had a two-handed sword, as large as a beam, in his hands, its point rested against the floor.

Thomas stirred. Being very weak, he felt some unusual, scary lightness in his body. His foot stumbled over a heap of armor. With slack surprise, he recognized his breastplate, shin plates, his helmet… He found himself sitting on the floor, his head on the woman’s knees. Baroness fingered his hair tenderly, stroked his head. The fireplace was bursting with flames, the air as hot and dry as a blow of simoom, the terrible hurricane of Saracen deserts. The shouts of fury and clang of steel were coming from outside, through the windows.

Thomas heard an icy cold voice over his head, an arrogant voice, full of great contempt. “Get out, slave! Or my husband, the lord of the castle, will rise and kill you!”

The wonderer looked with confusion at the motionless troll who sprawled his four paws in a huge puddle of blood. “I think he’ll rise when pigs get wings.”

“It’s the former,” Baroness said coldly. “And the present lord is here! He’s fierce and merciless.”

The wonderer moved his heavy rocks of shoulders and backed. “Well, if that’s the turn of it…”

Thomas gathered the last of his strength to croak, “Sir wonderer… wait. Horses…”

The wonderer stopped in the doorway. The door was still swinging on a hinge, squeaking as a knife that scratches a pan. “What?”

“Help!” Thomas moaned.

The wonderer came back, touched the knight’s forehead, gave an anxious whistle. Thomas felt his strong fingers behind ears, on the back of the head, then a stitch in the bridge of the nose. Suddenly he felt a huge load taken off, no more warm dampness inside. His eyesight cleared, he saw distinctly the alarm in wonderer’s eyes, his compressed lips.

Baroness seized by legs, trying to keep him. With great difficulty, Thomas drew aside her beautiful snow-white hands, for the only touch of which other knights would give their lives. He got up, lurched. The wonderer watched, with a sullen approval, the knight climb into his rumpled armor like an old ill turtle.

“My lord!” the young Baroness cried, her marvelous eyes filled with tears. “You’re exhausted. You’ve slain the monster…”

Thomas dressed as fast as he could, puffing and panting. The wonderer supported him by shoulders, clasped his back, pulled, pushed and tapped — and Thomas found himself inside the armor. At once he felt clad and protected, comfortable with the steel lying heavily on shoulders.

He heaved the sword up from the puddle of black blood. As against the sword in the wonderer’s hands, it looked like a dagger.

The wonderer waved to him from near the window. “We’ll have to go through back chambers!”

“Slaves got in?” Thomas asked dully. He shot an embarrassed glance at the golden-haired Baroness. “We can’t allow… A rape…”

“Slaves are far. Guards are retreating to the gate. A dozen of those mugs will be there soon, and I hate it when people fight like animals!” He backed from the window, ominous crimson lights dancing on his face. They heard triumphant cries and screams of agony from outside, the crackle of buildings put on fire.

Thomas turned to Baroness. “Where’s the cup?”

“Which?” she asked, her beautiful eyebrows raised very high. “I have many cups. Baron brought them from everywhere. And the previous Baron… And the one before him…”

The wonderer turned around. “This cup came itself,” he snapped angrily. “Speak quickly, woman!”

Baroness straightened up with an arrogant look. Her long eyelashes flew up. “Am I not protected by a brave knight, a slayer to monster? A knight, though he wears a collar of my slave?”

Thomas coughed. “Sir wonderer. You’re speaking to a highborn lady.”

The wonderer winced as if he drank some apple vinegar. “Sort it out as you like. I’ve left the horses near the tower wall. If you want to get out safe — come with me. Otherwise I’m leaving alone.”

Thomas trailed behind Oleg miserably. There was a fight at the stairs, a floor below: a rush of heads, glittering blades, stakes and axes. Men shouted, steel clanged, wounded ones shrieked awfully.

The wonderer all but dragged the knight. Suddenly Thomas stopped, raised his visor. His face was pallid, eyes shone like stars. “It was not my life I wanted to save! You know.”

“A cup dearer than life?” the wonderer flung out, startled.

“There are many things dearer than life. Honor. Nobility. Fidelity. Even love. Run, sir wonderer! You’ve amazed me, I’d have never thought… I owe my life to you twice. I’m sorry I can’t pay back… I’m staying. Even if I die.”

“Honor and fidelity — I know what’s that. But… a cup?”

“Not a plain cup.”

With a strange expression, the wonderer watched the doomed knight leave for the bedroom. The glittering figure passed through the doorway and vanished, leaving a track of blood drops from his sword point. Oleg heard a forceful roar swelling at the stairs. The last of the defenders gave a plaintive cry, and slaves rushed up, glistening with bare backs. Few of them had swords or daggers, most brandished picks, crowbars, stakes, and hammers wildly. Even the handles were stained with blood.

The wonderer clenched his teeth, gave a heavy sigh. His legs moved apart into a fighting stance themselves. He took the sword with both hands and started to wait.

Thomas ran out, clasping a leather bag to his breast, the bare sword in other hand. His visor was down, so Oleg couldn’t see the knight’s face. Blood was streaming down his armor. He jumped over the dead bodies, stumbled over a wounded man who tried to crawl. “Slaves here too… They’ve broken into the bedroom from another side to rape Baroness.”

“And you defended her with all your might?”

“Er… It was before I found the cup! I killed three…”

The wonderer winced. “Wasn’t that a haste?”

“I slashed the third, then saw displeasure in her face and doubted… Where are horses?”

“Castle is butchered and plundered all over. Some crossbowmen barricaded themselves in a tower, shooting everyone. If we run across the yard, we’ll get set with their bolts as hedgehogs with spines. Can you climb down the wall in your steel?”

“Better than a monkey!” Thomas assured and ran after the wonderer. Oleg rushed along the corridors, upstairs, and across the rooms briskly as if he had known the castle well.

Slaves tore expensive curtains, crushed furniture with axes. Once the wonderer rushed across the burning floor, vanished in the smoke for a moment. Thomas speeded up in fear to get lost. When they ran out on the top of the wall, the sky was shining blue, a lone small cloud blazing with orange, but the yard was lit by the crimson light of great fires burning the furniture and rich clothes that had been thrown from inside. The servants were shrieking terribly, butchered by the blood-mad slaves for their being well-fed, sleeping near the warm caldrons in kitchens, spared of the draining work in the stone pit.

A rope fixed between the merlons hung down from the wall. Two horses stood tethered to a tree near the castle. Some half-naked men were running to them, attracted by the dense smoke and shouts from the castle.

Thomas swore, pushed the wonderer aside and started to descend. He caught hold of the rope deftly with his gauntlets and legs, slipped down quickly, slowed his slide before the very ground. When Oleg descended after him — more slowly, so as not to scrap his hands — the knight was rushing to the horses, shouting and brandishing his sword.

The common men stopped, took a fast council and rounded the dangerous knight, making their way to the castle gate. Thomas turned to the wonderer and pointed at the rope. “We’d rather take it. A useful thing in journey.”

“A thrifty man,” said Oleg with surprise. “Come on, I’ve fetched two. If you need one to hang yourself, let me know.”

Thomas untethered his horse. The stallion sniffed him and snorted happily. Thomas seemed to see the sparkles of pride in the horse’s eyes when he smelled the blood on his armor. His destrier preferred the blow of war trumpets to the sounds of lute. The blow for attack, for a heavy mass of armored chivalry to gallop forward, stirrup by stirrup, crushing all in its way!

Oleg jumped on the horseback easily. Thomas made a notch in memory: to find out where the wonderer had learnt to mount that way, touching neither the stirrup nor the rein. And where, in which cave or desert, what holy spirits taught him to throw a knife that accurate, to wield a huge two-handed sword? He did wield it, not simply brandished like a furious cook brandishes a knife. It took Thomas, a professional warrior, only a glance to tell a skilled fighter apart from… others.

The knight galloped, heavy and still, the lance in his right hand as usual, his visor up. He looked askew at the wonderer who was driving his horse with legs, as wild Scythians do, not touching the reins. He did not bend down to hide from the wind, his face motionless, his look vacant. Was he still searching for the Truth? Thinking of the high? Anyway, he had not forgotten to take both the lance for the knight and a fine lamellate bow for himself. Though the bow of English yeoman is no worse, it is tall as a man or even taller. And this lamellate bow can be shot from horseback — by the one who’s strong enough to draw it. That requires a great strength indeed.

On the left of his saddle, the wonderer had a wide quiver stuffed with long white-feathered arrows, its silk laces shining in the sun. The covered axe hung near it. His boots held in the wide stirrups as though poured into.

“Sir wonderer,” said Thomas. He reined the warhorse up, making him take a slow pace. “What can you do else?” The wonderer looked confused. Thomas hurried to correct himself. “In the war craft, I mean. I see you thinking about the high, but the noble art of war is also ranked high in our world!”

“The world is cruel and stupid, alas. It still is.”

“What do minstrels sing about if not feats of arms?” Thomas cried in surprise. “If not battle and fight? What are heroes born for if not to fight and die with glory?”

The wonderer shook his head and did not reply. His stallion was as huge as the one under Thomas but the knight remembered the great effort it took him to break the horse in, while the wonderer’s destrier walked as meek as a lamb. He only looked at his rider askew with fear. I heard Scythians can squeeze with their knees so forcefully that a horse falls dead with broken ribs. Can those rumors be true?

“The Hellenes,” Thomas began, trying to get the wonderer talking, “knew only chariots. The first time they saw men ahorse, they took those people, Tauric Slavs, for fairy creatures — half a man, half a horse. And gave them the name of centaurs, or riding Taurs… They were said to be good shooters at full tilt!”

The wonderer gave him a sidelong look. “Is there any food in your bag?” he asked.

“Nothing but the cup,” Thomas replied, upset. “So what?”

The wonderer seized the bow from his shoulder instantly. The white feathering flashed. At once, Thomas heard a ringing click. The wonderer hung the bow back without expression. Only then did petrified Thomas look where the arrow had darted to.

In forty steps ahead on the roadside, a big hare was thrashing, its body pierced through. Still not believing his eyes, Thomas overrode the wonderer, picked the hare up with the lance point. The wonderer, with the same still face, stretched his arm. Thomas pulled the arrow out briskly, wiped it clean from blood and handed to him respectfully. “I’ll skin it myself at the halt, holy father! Er… sir wonderer! Christian faith is certainly the truest one, but Paganism seems to have some good things in it too…”

The wonderer smirked with the corner of his mouth and said nothing.

Chapter 5

By noon, they entered a small village. The wonderer rode up to a remote house reeking of soot, burnt iron and rust. A strong, sturdy man came out to meet them, his leather apron in burnt holes. Oleg asked, still in his saddle, “Can you shoe a horse and unclench two iron rings?”

The man glowered at him. “I’ll have to make fire again…”

“That’s a pity,” Oleg said sincerely. “I thought you’d make use of two gold coins…”

The man wheeled round to the house, bellowed so loud that horses laid back their ears in fright. “Varnak, Boldyr! Warm the forge up, fast! Sharpen some nails!”

Oleg jumped off the horse. Thomas smirked understandingly, dismounted and gave the reins to the children that came running. The village smith had many children: some of them made the fire, others unsaddled and watered the horses, while his wife hastened to pluck a goose

The blacksmith’s eyes widened when he saw the collar on the noble knight’s neck, but he said nothing. Wielding his chisel and tongs quickly and skillfully, he unclenched the damned rings and threw them on burning coals to melt. No trace of us if Baron’s overseers come to question. Oleg tossed two gold coins in his palm. The smith thanked and dropped them on the sooty anvil. It looked accidental. Then he smiled, put coins into his purse accurately.

Oleg smirked. “Different things happen?”

The smith shook his head in distress. “You won’t believe it, good man! Each summer I got foisted twice or trice: gold or silver turned to be dry leaves the next day! That was until I knew no magic can stand iron and started dropping coins on my anvil… I’ve already caught a fraud. That fool swore he had been duped himself. Maybe that wasn’t a lie. If he was a wizard, why he did nothing when I… er… taught him a lesson?”

When he fixed a loose horseshoe, Oleg gave him one more golden coin. They rode away at once, the goose in their bag, in a hurry to get as far from the castle as possible.

The scorching sun was in zenith. The road meandered: beaten, trampled in the dry solid ground many centuries ago. Once it would have to round hills, turn to cities and groves, but as the ages passed, the cities had been ruined and groves cut down, so only the hills remained, though subsided of age. The road was making its way among ancient ruins. Some boulders, whitened of wind and heat, had rolled down onto the roadside.

“What is that wooden necklace on you?” Thomas asked curiously. “You keep touching it, as if afraid to get it filched.”

“My charms are not a necklace,” the wonderer said without turning his head.

“Charms? Do you charm with them?”

“Through them, I hear gods give advice.”

Thomas laughed. “And I hear none!”

“Really? I hear a gang of brigands dividing their loot in that grove. And farther across the forest, there’s a village where we’ll find a shelter for night.”

Thomas gave him a skeptical look. “The village… you may have been there before. But the brigands… Well, let’s chop them up like cabbages!”

The wonderer winced, replied with disgust, “Can’t do without fight? We’ll better round them.”

He turned onto a side path to a grove. Thomas followed reluctantly. His stallion tossed his head up, snorted in excitement. Thomas shared his delight when he heard a small stream tinkling ahead. They broke through thick shrubs and saw a spring — a small lake, not larger than a knight’s shield, surrounded by fresh, sappy green grass. A spurt of water was rising in the middle of the sandy bottom. The grits of sand whirled, spun round and sunk, forming a smooth round rampart that could belong to a tiny castle.

The wonderer unsaddled the horses and started gathering brushwood. Thomas considered skinning a hare to be a more noble affair than that, so he skinned it deftly, disemboweled and cleaned. “The arrow pierced the heart through! I admire you, sir wonderer! To hit a hare running across our way at forty steps, at full tilt!”

“We rode slowly,” Oleg reminded, frowning.

He struck fire, blew the spark up on the dry moss. Reddish flames started licking honey-yellow twigs timidly, then grew braver, gnawed deeper into twigs that crunched like sweet bones in a dog’s strong teeth, sparks flying up. While Thomas fussed around the fire, choosing a place to fry the slices of meat, Oleg took a small camp bowl out of the bag silently and filled it with water. “Holy father!” Thomas exclaimed in amazement. “You’ve thought about everything!” He sliced the liver, stuck it on some thin barked twigs, fried it over the coals diligently, while the meat was boiled in the bowl. The wonderer had added some herbs to the stew, their aromas drifted over the tiny glade.

After the meal, they lay in a light shadow, watching the scorching sky through sparse branches. It was heated, with not a cloud.

The horses chewed grass nearby, nibbled the young sprouts of shrubs. Thomas put his hands behind his head, some pieces of his armor off, but his sword and shield close at hand. “What a wonderful world God created,” he said in quiet surprise. “Once I told Saracens that in winter in our country water turns as hard as stone. They made a mockery of me. If I said that our rains last for weeks, that we curse rains and showers, they would not believe either. For them, each drop of water is worth its weight in gold, while we don’t know how to get rid of it! My Britain is all wild swampy woods.”

“Rus’ is the same,” Oleg agreed.

“It’s in Europe too? The forests here are puny bushes as against ours. In our country, one can live a life without seeing the sky! And here everything is seen through, no place to stay alone. In our land, getting to a neighbor town is a dangerous journey across bogs, wild woods, mess of wind-fallen trees and bogs again and swamps and marshes!”

Oleg sounded sad. “If one of our princes wants to war another, he has first of all to send scout parties ahead to know the way. After the winter, there are always new lakes, bogs, flooded areas. Then he has half of his army pave roads and clean the way. And if an appanage prince refuses to pay tax, what’s the way to force him? More trouble than it is worth! It’s easier to attack Tsargrad[7] than a neighbor entrenched in his bogs!”

“Is Rus’ all like that?” Thomas doubted. “What about centaurs?”

“They belong to Southern Rus’. Some call it Scythia,[8] in the old way . Everyone is a rider there. It’s a space. No skyline there but a skyround. Trees are rare but the grass is waist-high. They are the same nation but differ from us in clothing and hunting ways and prayers. The Forest and the Steppes have different gods.”

“God said: no Gentile or Jew! If to think it over, we’re all the same nation, though we speak different tongues. The God’s decree is to become a single nation again!”

Oleg gave him a surprised look. His soft voice had a mock hidden deep in it. “A single nation bowing to your only god? What about those who won’t like it?”

Thomas punched the hot ground with his huge fist. “We’ll force them. It is what God inspired the Great Crusade for — to turn Pagans into the true faith!”

Oleg tossed as if he were lying on sharp stones. “The world is changing,” he said in a low voice. “Indeed it is. Once men had been simply plundering. They did put it that blunt: we’re going to plunder Tsargrad, they said. To get our winter coats in Persia. Going to war to take slaves from our neighbor, take loot and burn what we can’t take… Now we make wars to bring civilization to faraway lands. Yes, we’re plundering still but silent about it, ashamed of it… The millstones of culture mill slowly but surely.”

Thomas sat up, feeling his beliefs insulted. “What do you mean, sir wonderer?” he asked with dignity.

Oleg sat up too, looked at the sun. “We must go. By evening we’ll be in the village I mentioned — and part there. Your way is to Britain, mine — to Rus’. Or rather you can have some more rest and I shall ride on.” He got up, dusted himself off, made a deafening whistle. His horse tossed his head up, broke through the bushes to him timidly. Oleg jumped into the saddle with no touch to stirrups. The horse squatted under his weight.

“Your bowl!” Thomas cried.

Oleg waved aside. “Take it. A useful thing for a journey.”

“And you?”

“I’m used to being content with little.” He started turning his horse.

“Wait, sir wonderer!” Thomas cried. “I take your kind offer to ride to the village together. Every road seems short when you have a companion.”

The wonderer’s face expressed no joy. Probably he would rather stay alone with his thoughts of the High, but Thomas hurried to pour the rest of the stew on the burning coals, shoved the bowl into the bag, struggled into his armor hastily, leaving two important clasps on his back undone.

He climbed into the saddle with an effort: a hundred and ninety pounds in him not to count the armor, but the destrier strolled on as he was used to, his huge steel horseshoes thumping on the ground.

They outrode some carts loaded with poor household chattels. Women and children sat there under awnings, while men drove the draft horses, so dry and slim-legged as if the violent heat had melted not only grease but also meat out of them. The men followed big Franks with unfriendly eyes but looked down when Thomas gave them a menacing once-over.

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas said suddenly. “We are both riding north from Jerusalem. We could travel together for much more than a day!”

The wonderer shook his head. “I’m not much a one for fighting.”

“At least we could ride side by side for a longer time! And if it comes to swords, I’ll cope myself.” He bit his tongue when he remembered that the wonderer had witnessed his last coping. He was the one to nurse Thomas back to health, curing him by herbs, dressing his wounds.

“No,” the wonderer said firmly. Thomas realized nothing was to change his mind. “I am another sort of man. Your road is different, as your life is. Besides, you are secretive. I feel a strange thing about you. A very strange thing. And a danger I can’t fathom.”

“Danger?” Thomas repeated in perplexity. “Which one? Life is full of dangers. Especially a knight’s life.”

For a moment, the wonderer rode silent. The knight fidgeted impatiently, waiting for his answer. “Other danger,” Oleg said reluctantly. “Somehow related to the cup. But how? I don’t get it.”

“Your charms told you that?” Thomas whispered in a superstitious fear.

“So they did.”

Thomas crossed himself, spat over his left shoulder and cast a cautious glance around. They were riding through a deserted place. “Our Lady, preserve and protect!.. If you think bad of me, sir wonderer, it’s all my fault. You saved me twice and I mistrusted you… Sir wonderer. The cup I bear is really more than a cup!” He fell silent. Oleg rode by his side, still, stalwart, and frowning as he looked at the way ahead. “Sir wonderer, have you heard of… the Holy Grail?”

Thomas kept his breath. He had said the last words almost in a whisper, but they sounded thunder to him. The wonderer shot a blade-sharp glance at him. “Is it… that one?” he asked abruptly.

“It is,” Thomas replied in surprise. “You… know it? You, Pagan?”

“When Christ, the god of yours, was crucified,” Oleg said, “one of his followers placed a cup, secretly, to collect his precious blood… Was it that way? Since that, you hold that cup sacred. You call it the Holy Grail.”

Thomas glanced around with caution. “You see,” he whispered, “even you Pagans were reached by the fame of Holy Grail. Many knights set out to find it: Sir Galahad, Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain, Sir Percival… But we needed Crusade to free Jerusalem, the Holy City, from infidel Saracens, to free the Holy Sepulcher and the holy places where Christ had walked…”

“How did you get the cup?” the wonderer interrupted.

“In a fierce fight, sir wonderer. I wouldn’t say it came rushing to my hands.”

“There’s a legend,” the wonderer spoke harshly, his eyes fixed on Thomas, “that only a pure soul may take the cup! Other men, it says, will get ill and die in throes…”

Thomas looked down. His cheeks blushed bright crimson, the color spread over all his face and to his neck. Even his ears flashed so brightly that one could light torches from them. “Sir wonderer… I may die in throes, but first I’ll deliver the cup to my blessed Britain! Let God’s grace fall on the heads of Angles, the people who worship Christ… and for whom I’m ready to give my life!”

Their horses walked side by side, so their feet in the stirrups touched. The field workers followed them with anxious eyes. Both riders looked enormous on the deserted road, neither a tree nor a bush near it. Their horses are Frankish — huge, heavy, stout-legged, their steel horseshoes crush the ground with a crunch. The massive knight’s armor is glittering in the rays of sunset as though covered with thick blood. Another rider is a clod of darkness: hooded, still and gloomy in his black cloak, its flaps flying like a black raven’s wings.

The sun set. The air started to lose its heat, very slowly. Horses cheered up, feeling a rest soon. The clear blue sky was darkening imperceptibly until it was menacing lilac and the pale sickle of moon came out filled with ominous light. A sun of vampires and dead things to replace the live orange sun.

Thomas breathed in the fresh, chilly air happily. The violet sky changed to black. Stars hung straight overhead: bright and big, the whole swarms of stars never seen in the northern sky.

“It is close,” Oleg told him. “That group of trees… It’s an orchard. A house is behind it. See it? Neither see I.”

“How do you know then?” Thomas wondered.

“I know it”, the wonderer said indifferently. “As you know good places to build a castle, a smithy, a watchtower, so I know such places for orchards and houses.”

The moon was flooding the world with ghostly pallid light, only the areas beneath trees remained black as coals. Horses walked on a trodden road but riders could barely hear the sound of hooves. Somewhere behind the trees, frogs were crying in strangely stern, metal voices. Thomas doubted whether it were frogs. Here, in a desert? Oleg pointed silently at the trees: metal trills were coming from branches.

The roof of a small house was seen from a distance, surrounded closely by curly, well-groomed trees. The flat earthen roof was moonlit, while the rest of the house dark. Thomas and Oleg heard some risen male voices, drunken shouts, then a loud, insistent knock on the door.

They reined their horses into a slow pace. Trees hid them, allowing to approach on the dart throwing distance. They stopped on the edge of a broad moonlit lawn near the house. Before the porch, several motley-clothed men were laughing, passing among them a wicker basket with a narrow jug mouth sticking out from it. One of them hammered at the door with his fist and roared, “Open the door! Open it, you stupid woman! Or we break in!”

A faint female voice replied from inside. “What do you want? Go away!” She sounded scared, almost weeping,

“You’ll know what we want!” the man cried hoarsely. “Let us in!”

“I have a knife to protect myself!”

Thomas breathed faster, his face contorted scarily, dark in the faint moonlight. Oleg hemmed with sympathy, his eyes thoughtful. The knight was shaking with fury, his eyes popped out, his lips white and trembling. He seized his helmet and slapped it on. The visor shielded his face with a clink.

The man at the door roared with laughter. His friends cried cheerfully. One of them ran onto the porch, shouted in drunken boldness, “You can’t stab all of us! But you can… ha ha!.. sate all of us if you try your best!”

“I brought true men to amuse you!” the first man cried in a hollow voice. “Open it, silly!”

They heard a woman weeping inside. “She can’t kill all of you but we can!” Thomas cried, his voice constrained with fury.

The laughter stopped. In full silence, men turned to the trees. Their hands gripped daggers, axes and swords. The horses beneath Oleg and Thomas stood motionless, as well as the villains. Apparently, they had been the masters of night up to that day, no one dared to challenge them. “Hey,” one of them cried from the porch, “whoever you are! Stay where you stand, and you’ll be safe. Or go to hell, if you don’t want your bones dragged away by dogs!”

Thomas roared with a creepy laugher, like a mighty lion to a jackal sprawled in his paws. “My bones? Your bones are straw for my sword!”

Two villains stirred at last, started to move closer to the darkness beneath trees. Oleg drew the bow string briskly and seized an arrow.

The villains came closer, their eyes made out the dim shapes of riders when Oleg put the arrow on. The bow string clicked, his fingertips gripped another arrow at once, he made a shot, seized the next arrow… The quiver was over his shoulder, so the wonderer could pull arrow out, put it on the bow and shot it with a single move, and he did it with such a lightning speed that Thomas had barely drove his horse into a heavy gallop when several arrows swished by him in a sequence. Someone near the house shouted in fury.

Thomas burst out of the shadow with roar, bent down to the horse’s neck, his lance pointed ahead. The two closest villains froze on the spot, advancing their daggers. Thomas pierced one through like a leaf, his bones crunched under the lance, another was trampled by his destrier. The night filled with terrible cries. Men were running away from the house, falling. In the ghostly moonlight Thomas saw glittering silver feathers in their necks, backs and breasts. The arrows went easily into the flesh of half-naked villains.

Thomas’s lance had been left behind, so he pulled out a sword, slashed the third villain slantwise, brandished at the next one but saw a white bloom opened at his chest, with a wooden stem. The villain fell to his knees, blood gushed out from his mouth. Thomas yelled, shook his sword at Oleg. The rest three were fleeing along the road, their coal-black shadows darting ahead of them like night birds. Thomas bellowed and drove his warhorse after them.

Oleg rode out of shadows slowly, an arrow on his bow string. He watched and listened, but there were only death rattles and moans in the night. Soon he heard the thud of hooves that amplified to thunder. A big ferocious knight burst out onto the lawn in all his magnificence, a huge sword slantwise in hand, big drops falling on the ground from the blade. He seemed to be just out of butchery, even his horse splashed with blood.

“You killed all!” Thomas barked at Oleg. “Could you have been a slower shooter?”

“As a child, I was taught to keep seven arrows in the air.”

“We are not in your Pagan Rus’! Here, in the Christian world, men can barely shoot at all.” He pulled up, made a circle around the law. The wounded men tried to crawl away, moaning, leaving dark traces of blood behind. Soon they got silent and motionless, with their fingers dug into the ground.

The door was opened with caution. A pale female face appeared in the slit, then her thin hand. Making sure of no villains on the porch, the woman came out silently: small, thin in waist, her eyes big and scared.

Thomas waved his metal hand at her. The sword, dark with blood, was still in it. The knight checked himself, wiped the blade hastily and sheathed it. Oleg took the bow string off, hid the bow in its case. The woman ran down briskly, her heels tapped on the porch as a squirrel’s paws. She bent over a wounded villain, turned him to his back.

Thomas touched the reins, his stallion moved closer to the woman, like a dark mountain, the ground trembling and thumping under his hooves. The woman jerked up her head, her face pale, her eyes wide with fear. “Thank you for your interference, noble knight,” she said briskly.

“It’s my duty,” Thomas replied gallantly.

“Now… please help to carry this man into the house.”

“What for?” Thomas wondered.

“To put him to bed, to dress his wound!”

Thomas’s gauntlet slapped on the saddle. “Woman! You feel pity for a beast who wanted to take you by force and kill you! Let him die. As a Christian, I’m never angry with the dead.”

“Then you should have killed him at once!” she objected passionately. “Now the fight is over, it’s time to lick wounds. I won’t have a man die at my door! Even if he’s no man but an evil wolf!”

Oleg dismounted. “Open the door. I’ll help.”

He seized the wounded man by his collar and belt. The woman ran up the porch. Thomas dismounted, his good spirits lost. This silly woman knows nothing. The beginning was fine: a cry for help, a brief fight, a woman saved — but then all of it turned folly. Province! And the wonderer could be expected of even less so. A Pagan, uneducated, just out of caves where one can hardly learn good manners.

While the men was put to bed and Oleg dressed his wounds and the woman — Chachar was her name — warmed some water, Thomas examined the bodies outside. Five dead, two wounded badly: unconscious, hardly able to breath. Thomas was glad the merciful woman had not noticed them. He took out his misericord, a long narrow dagger made to finish wounded knights off through a visor slit, and stabbed their throats.

Five villains were killed with arrows: shot in head, in throat, two shot in heart, and Oleg’s arrow in back had also reached the heart. One man was span with lance like a bug with a spin. The one trampled by the destrier had been carried to the house. On the road, Thomas had run down and slashed three more. Overall, he had sent to the Hell five of them — as much as the wonderer.

Cheered up a bit, he tethered the horses and started to pull the arrows out. The force with which the wonderer had sent them was amazing. Some men were pierced through. By the moment he plucked all five arrows, he got all covered with blood again, like a butcher. Bow is a dreadful weapon. The Holy Church had a purpose to oppose it and to prohibit crossbows, or arbalests, at all. With a bow, even a coward can slay a hero. If heroes die and ambushed cowards remain safe, it will put an end to courage. Battles should be honest: breast to breast, face to face!

He wiped the arrows clean, washed himself in the barrel of water near the porch and went into the house.

Chapter 6

The house of the small woman was neat and tidy, with fire burning in the big stove and appetizing gurgle in pots. Chachar was serving bowls to the table, her cheeks reddened, eyes glistened while she stared at Thomas and Oleg in joy. She was young and tempting, her ripe breasts almost bounced out of her low-necked dress, which was so light in that southern heat that it did not hide her sinful, as the Christian faith put it, body but draw every detail of it seductively.

Oleg, a Pagan, glanced at the young woman gladly, but Thomas started feeling uneasy. Twice he choked with tiny pieces of meat. Chachar kept serving him more and more of it, pouring with sauces, sprinkling with herbs, spices, red and black pepper — and looking in his eyes, moving her whole body closer to him, all but whining and waving her tail, like a pup. Her lips, plump as ripe cherries, came apart, showing pearl-white teeth, pointed like a child’s. Her whole being was catching every desire of the brave knight.

Oleg ate unhurriedly. He did not listen to the conversation but replayed the fight in his mind’s eyes and approved own behavior gloomily. He had felt no desire to kill, no warrior’s delight — he was only annoyed and blankly sad. That meant he could keep his bow and arrows: they would not make him go astray. Neither would they obscure his search for Truth.

The house had two rooms, the wounded man lying in the back one. He dared not to moan, in fear to be killed if they heard. Chachar brought him some food and came back anxious. “He has a fever… What can we do?”

Thomas waved aside with irritation but Oleg replied first. “I’ll go to sleep there and see to him.” He stood up.

“Maybe you will stay at the table for a while?” Chachar said briskly. “Men love to feast! I can bring some old wine — a couple of jugs I still have in my cellar.”

“We’ve had a shattering day,” Oleg replied. On the threshold of another room, he turned back and nodded at Thomas. “But sir knight might amuse you with his stories. He’d been fighting the Holy Land free, storming Jerusalem…” He shut the door behind him, fell down on the bed. Its planks were knocked together roughly. The wounded man held his breath in another corner. Oleg put his hands behind his head, fell fast asleep.

But he had touched his charms before, so his dreams were full of blood and fear.

Early in the morning, he was awaken by merry voices outside. Thomas, naked to his waist, was washing his face near the barrel with water. Chachar poured water on his hands, laughing, trying to splash it on his back — white as woman’s but muscular as a proper man’s, with two bluish scars under the shoulder blade. The knight squealed, jumped aside: the water was icy cold, taken from a spring.

Oleg stepped aside from the window on his toes. The knight’s armor lay on a wide bench, clean and polished to a shine, which could have hardly been done with Thomas’s own hands. The huge sword hung on two iron hooks in the wall. The steel-plated gauntlets were on the windowsill, beside flower pots… However, the woman was in terrible danger only last night and the knight was crucified, burnt, and tortured just a day before. Gods endowed Man with great vitality. They must have prepared him for a hard life.

The door slammed. Thomas entered the room, disheveled and smiling. His tanned face looked as if it had been stolen from another body — the tan ended abruptly at his throat. “How did you sleep, sir wonderer?”

“Well, thanks,” Oleg replied, staring at the knight. “And you have circles under eyes. You can stay here and have a rest.”

“And you?”

“I’m leaving after breakfast,” Oleg replied with no further explanations.

Thomas looked embarrassed. He put his clothes on hastily, paced up and down the room. “Sir wonderer… We are both heading north. May we ride together to Constantinople at least? You have no way to escape it, neither have I. All roads from Asia lead to this second Rome — the only place where Europe meets Asia!”

“Why do you want it?”

“Sir wonderer, I’ll be frank with you. It is the woman.”

Oleg looked at the young knight intently. “What are you going to do? Sell her? We drove the rapists away but we can’t stay here to guard her innocence.”

Thomas sounded unhappy. “She has… entrusted herself to us. Her husband — or maybe her patron, I didn’t understand and felt no need to elicit — was killed last week. They took the horses, so she got stuck in the house. She begs to take her away from this scary place.”

Oleg came to the window, looked over the yard and Chachar at the green valley, the olive grove and curly bushes, at the blue merciless sky with not a hint of rain. He shrugged. “She did not beg me.”

Thomas looked miserable as he was at that moment. “Sir wonderer… I have my hands full with the cup. Maybe you could?..”

Oleg brought his quiver from another room, checked the arrows quickly and put it on his back. With a desperate look on his face, Thomas watched the strange pilgrim adjust his belt in a very professional way, drag the two-handed sword from under the bench. “Do what you will,” Oleg replied. “I have no interest in women.”

“She’s not a woman! She’s a victim. We are bound to help her. Don’t your gods tell you to help the weak?”

Oleg cast a piercing look at him. “But Pagans are bad, aren’t they?”

“Not that bad!”

“Sir Thomas. I am looking for salvation for all people in the world.”

“So you let each single human die?”

Oleg paused, then asked abruptly, “What your woman wants?”

“My woman? Sir wonderer!”

“Well, not yours then, though she thinks otherwise. What does she want of you?”

“She asked to take her to any big city.”

Oleg thought for a while. His shoulders, heavy as big stones, moved reluctantly. “Two days journey… We’ll be there by tomorrow evening. I can stand it. Then I’ll give you the horse — you need a spare one in all your steel. A remount, I mean.”

“And you?”

“On foot, as I’m used to.”

Thomas did not fathom why to go on foot if you could ride, but he didn’t want to anger his comrade and said nothing.

After they broke a hearty fast — Chachar put on the table all of her stock — Oleg went to the horses. There were six of them left by marauders. He saddled three as remounts and prepared the most beautiful one for Chachar, a highborn lady. At least Thomas very much wants her to be that.

When Thomas put his armor on — Chachar must have helped him — and stepped heavily out on the porch, three saddled horses were pawing the ground impatiently under the window. Three remounts were loaded with bags, packs, and bundles. The wonderer was searching the dead men, turning out their pockets, collecting coins and rings. He had fastened the captured sabers and darts to the remounts. Each spare horse also carried a water skin.

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas said with surprise, “are we crossing a desert?”

“There are no wells on the short cut. Without water, we’d have to make a hook and over.”

“A hook? And over?”

“This is Rossian for a longer road. I mean we can take a shorter way if we have own water supply.”

Thomas’s face expressed hesitation, as if he could not decide whether a shorter way was better. They say: he who cuts his way will never get home by night, and he who rides straight gets to devil. He turned his head and called Chachar. Her clear voice replied from inside, a clatter of dishes joined it. Thomas gave Oleg a guilty smile and went into the house.

Chachar came out in men’s clothing and a traveling cloak. She lingered on the porch, staring at the wonderer as if she’d never seen him before. Thomas also stopped, gazing at his comrade in the stone quarry.

The wonderer had left his cloak in the house and came out in a short sleeveless wolfskin jacket, its fur outside. The skin was open, allowing to see his breast, as wide as a granite slab, and his bare shoulders, massive and glistening like rocks. His longs arms seemed to be carved of a dark oak, so thick and strong they were, bulging with sinews and muscle. His body was mighty but his face still and humble. His fire-red hair was tied with a silk lace over the eyebrows. Thomas found this look strangely attractive,

The wonderer’s trousers were made of curried leather. His belt was thick, with iron pendants that threw sunbeams all along it. A flack and a narrow knife were suspended on rings on the left of his belt. Two rings on the right — for a short sword — remained empty.

“A sword, an axe, a cleaver,” Thomas offered. “Would you take any?” He descended from the porch, still staring at the transformed wonderer. Back in the stone quarry Oleg had not pined: on the contrary, he had fleshed out with dry muscle. Now his big body has not a drop of fat, as if it were forged of steel.

“I’ve left the axe on a remount,” Oleg replied indifferently. “I don’t like to carry much steel.”

Thomas stroked his armor involuntarily. He thought that such a bull as the wonderer was born to carry mountain ridges. “Wolf skins were worn by barbarians who sacked Rome,” he said ironically.

“And destroyed it.”

“So they did,” Thomas agreed reluctantly. “But you are vulnerable like that!”

The wonderer turned the hem of his jacket back. On the inner side, two knife handles glittered side by side, identical as peas from a pod.

“Knives?” Thomas said in surprise. “What for?”

The wonderer stooped. Thomas pulled a knife carefully. It went out of the leather case in a reluctant, balking way, as if it didn’t want to leave its nest where its twin remained warm.

While Chachar walked around horses, shifting the saddle bags in her way, Thomas turned the knife in hand, watched the blade in enchantment. He remembered the throw with which the wonderer had cleaned their way out of the shape-shifter Baron’s castle.

The blade was razor-sharp, no longer than a palm, but heavy, thickened on the end. The cutting edge is on one side and on the other, for some strange reason, a stripe of base copper riveted to the excellent steel. The gleaming blade is seated on the straight shabby bone of a handle covered with small notches. To prevent fingers from slipping, Thomas guessed. Once he saw the throwing knives of Assassins, members of a secret Saracen sect, but those had wooden hilts. In the best knives, the wood was stretched over with shark skin, so rough that even sweaty fingers would never slip off. He scratched the sparkling spot of damask steel on the top of the hilt: the blade was set through it, the upper end bent down to keep the bone in place firmly.

“Why this strip of copper?” he asked with displeasure. “It ruins the beauty!”

“Beauty?” Oleg smirked. “What is beautiful about murder?”

“A murder holds no beauty,” Thomas replied with dignity, “but a joust does.”

“Yes. The more complicated and magnificent ritual, the less the murder itself is seen… This stripe protects against stabs.”

Thomas was surprised. “Fencing with such a short thing?”

“You’re still to be convinced that there are other lands than Britain?”

Chachar mounted at last, tired of waiting for the knight to help her, when Thomas checked himself. She sent him a charming smile from the saddle. He smiled back guiltily, handed the knife back to the wonderer and mounted his huge stallion.

Oleg outrode the knight and the young woman to let them chat without him in the way. The day was bright and sunny, the bloody night left behind, as well as the house with the wounded man in the back room. He remained whole save broken bones, so he will go robbing and plundering again as soon as his broken leg knits.

The woman’s happy laughter and the knight’s manly voice were behind Oleg. He went deep into brooding. As his hand touched the charms habitually, a vague fear started creeping into his soul, breaking through clean and sublime thoughts about the secret purport of life and being. One charm stuck in his fingers too frequently — the one showing swords, arrows, fierce griffons and heavenly fire… The world is dangerous: villains rob on the roads, marauders break into villages, wolf packs wait for a traveler, but charms are silent about such daily mess, trifles and small inconveniences. That’s the ordinary life — but now dangers seem to be beckoned from every side, dragged onto our way!

Oleg looked himself over, then shot a glance back. The knight was telling Chachar of heroic deeds and battles, throwing out his chest proudly, bursting with laughter. Is he dangerous? An ordinary knight, one of many in this land captured by Arabs and then invaded by European hosts? Or is it the woman?

Oleg missed the moment when the woman’s laughter had stopped. Suddenly, he heard Thomas nearby. “Sir wonderer, what’s the good of that copper?”

Oleg started, gave the knight a puzzled look. Thomas rode stirrup by stirrup with him, keen curiosity written on his face. Woman rode behind in resentful silence.

“I’m interested in weapons,” Thomas explained. “Surely, knives are no knightly weapon, but while a unite commander in the assault of Jerusalem, I learnt to use different… Not for myself, for I am a noble knight of Gisland, but for my men I had to… Do you understand, sir wonderer?”

“When you slash with swords,” Oleg said, annoyed with being returned to mundane matters, “they collide and slide. The fight gets clumsy, ill-predictable… Parrying a blow with my knife, I know exactly where the enemy’s blade is. Copper is soft, a blade will not slip along it but stop.”

He took the knife out, handed it to the knight. Thomas turned it in hand, his gaze shifted to the wonderer’s big hands. “Isn’t the handle short for you?”

“Three fingers fit into? That’s it. And there’s room for a thumb on another side. That’s enough for a good throw. The shorter handle is the better. Would you like a try? On the average, the thrown knife makes a turn in the air within seven steps, so it will stab the one standing or running in three, ten or thirteen steps.”

“What if the enemy’s in eight steps?”

“Then you make it turn faster. Or slower. That’s all.”

Thomas handed the knife back hastily. “No! A knight is not the kind of wandering Gypsy.”

“Hum… What about wandering knights?”

“Errant!” Thomas corrected indignantly. “Errant knights! Back in the times of King Arthur and since that, the knights of the Round Table were erring in search of adventure…”

“Isn’t that what Gypsies do?.. Well, well. By the way, you can throw a knife in a knightly way — straightly as if it were a dart. With no turns! That is what the blade ends are made heavier and the handle is made of light wood or bone for. Would you try?”

Thomas shook his head. “We, Angles of Britain, have an inquiring mind but little love for changes. A good sword and a long spear are our weapons for ever and ever! We shall remain what God made us!”

He reined up. Oleg rode farther, alone with his thoughts. Soon he heard the silver tinkle of woman’s laughter behind, then a hollow burst of the knight’s laughter. Oleg marveled at the powers of their vitality and endurance again. Gods must have prepared a hard way ahead for man. Otherwise they’d not give him such powers.

The road rose on a mountain peak and Oleg had time, before a descend, to take in the environs at a glance: green hills, a valley with smooth square fields, small villages — and a high ramparted castle far ahead. At the distance it seemed small like a toy, no details visible, but the road went there, swarmed with galloping riders and slow heavy-loaded carts.

Frowning, he drove his horse down slowly. The road was trodden, gently sloping, sided with old olives: their trunks swollen, their crooked branches seemed to be bent in torment. The heat grew torrid. The bright blue sky was getting lighter until it was the off-white color of ashes. The air turned so dry that a breath of it was scratching. They saw hares darting and heard quails chirring in the wheat fields and thick grass along roadsides.

Thomas rode in his armor stoically, only his helmet off and hanging on the saddle hook. The wind ruffled his flaxen hair, tore the drops of sweat off his red steamed face. Chachar tried to sing, laughed, kept shooting glances in the knight’s eyes of that bright blue color, strange and wonderful in this land of brown-eyed men.

At noon Oleg spotted some rich greenery from a distance, turned there and found a small stream. They made a halt, watered horses. Chachar spread food and spices on the tablecloth. Oleg undressed, rinsed himself with the icy water that made its way upward to the sun from goodness-knows-which depth. Thomas watched him with envy. Finally, the knight couldn’t help stripping naked himself and dipping into the stream, which was less than knee-deep. He screamed and laughed happily, raising clouds of sparkling spray. He also washed his clothes, beat them with stones, spread out in the grass to dry up.

When Oleg untied the bags of oat from the horse snouts, Thomas was sitting near the stream, tearing his white skin with nails as hard as hooves, his face twisted with exceptional enjoyment. “Flies…” he moaned through gritted teeth. “Begot by Satan himself for torturing Christian knights. They get under pieces of armor where no Saracen saber can reach…”

“Flies? Really?”

“Disgusting white worms! They make flies, be it known to you, sir wonderer.”

“I know it,” Oleg muttered, “but a noble knight knowing that is a surprise!”

Thomas shook his head, scratching himself furiously. “You won’t believe what silly things are put in our heads as children! To be named a knight, one needs to learn trivium and quadrivium, to sing and make verses, to read and write… But I, to tell the truth, went into knightly exercise most of all!”

“I can guess,” Oleg mumbled. “If even kings in Europe can’t read and sign with a cross…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Thomas dismissed with light heart. “As soon as a king receives a letter, he has a Jew caught and brought to him. All Jews can read and write, it’s required by their faith. The Jew reads the letter to the king. He dictates the answer, the Jew scrabbles it, the letter is sealed and sent back with a rider! That’s all. And the king who gets the answer will also have a Jew brought to read it.”

“Very convenient,” Oleg agreed.

Thomas did not catch the sarcasm. He reached an itching place between his shoulder blades and groaned with joy. “Call Chachar,” Oleg offered. “She has a cat’s nails.”

Thomas glanced back warily at the woman. She was sitting half-turned in few steps, listening. Her cheek and pink ear were blush red, hands moved awkwardly, dropping meat, eggs and onions. “I can’t,” Thomas replied finally. “She’s a woman of noble birth! I can’t make her do this plain work.”

“Surely, a common woman would have scratched your back better. But she’s not likely to be found here.”

After the lunch and a brief rest, they continued on their journey. Soon they rode in a hundred steps past a strange ancient building. It stood in a flat valley, high thick grass swaying around it, the entrance overgrown with shrubs, thick green ropes climbing up the walls, clinging to the cracks, their leaves glistening like wax. The building was enormous, gloomy, formed by huge grey stone blocks. Having been abandoned for centuries, dented by winds and heat, it was a silent memory of ancient empires and vanished nations.

Oleg felt anguish gnawing at his heart. It is known that Black God would not allow Man to climb out from wildness and ignorance to the shining peaks where the Fair Gods dwell! He plots and impedes, but people are helped by Fair Cods who created them. However, there is still more loss than success on the thorny path. A seat of culture is barely created when the wild hordes sent by Black God would ruin its prospering cities, burn libraries, destroy dams and canals… It is raised from the ruins — and ruined, burned and butchered again by beastly men. Endlessly, all the time… Too much loss, blood and suffering.

Surely, the Man is moving to the shining peak. Though rolling down almost to the bottom after each disaster, he then climbs a bit higher than he did the last time. The young European kingdoms, despite their ignorance and violence of savages, are more humane in their heart as compared to the ancient empires that left the ruins of colossal circuses where live men — the gladiators — had been fighting to death. The empires had built pyramids, lighthouses and temples where thousands of people were sacrificed, while in the new Barbarian faith there was only one human sacrifice the last and the greatest one: Christ, the founder of the faith, gave his life. Since that, people are not sacrificed any more, even the battles of gladiators were replaced by the chariot racing…

The evening was falling. They headed for the crimson half of the sky: it looked like covered with dry blood, dark and brown, bright purple drops let out in the ruptures only. The sun was half below the skyline, long reddish shadows lay across the evening land.

The road led to the castle that stood out gloomily against the crimson sun and expanded with every step they made. Oleg looked at it with a sullen eye, urged his horse on, so that to pass by it before dark. The lands around the castle looked swept by a terrible storm. Everything was broken, trampled, and soiled. Wide stubs glistened in place of the grove, for the trees had been sawn down almost at the ground level. The castle stands in the middle of trampled field — freshly built, its watchtowers still not roofed. No annexes: only a great square keep of four floors and stables and a rampart surrounding a large area of the roughly loosened ground. The main building has holes instead of windows, some with fresh-forged grates in them. A flag with eagles, dragons and roaring bears is flying over the castle gate.

Thomas was telling Chachar loudly and competently that shrubs and trees had been cut down and grass burnt in order not to allow a wicked enemy to get close without being seen. The land is still Saracen, Christian warriors need to consolidate the captured lands urgently. After that, they will be able to extend their noble rule to other Pagan nations.

They had passed the castle when the gate opened and two riders burst out at full tilt. Both shouted loudly, waved their hands. Thomas reined up and turned his horse slowly, his lance pointed menacingly at the strangers who were approaching. Oleg rode aside, took his bow and draw the string briskly. Chachar hid behind the back of the shining knight.

Two unarmed, except for daggers on their belts, young boys in very bright clothes came to them unhurriedly, stopped in three steps. One of the boys raised his palm. “I am a squire of Sir Gorvel, the noble knight!” he said in a clear ringing voice. “My lord asks you, tired travelers, to do him a honor of your visit! You are invited to have a rest in the castle. Your horses will be fed by choice corn, and you will be woken up in the morning… if only you don’t prefer to stay for few more days.”

Oleg took in a breath, intending to refuse firmly, when Thomas cried happily. “Gorvel? We climbed the walls of Jerusalem together with him, like two evil monkeys! Arrows swishing, stones flying, and two of us standing back to back… Is it his castle? He’s a seignior now?”

“The king granted him these lands,” the squire replied with such pride as if he had been granted with them. “There are only seven of us. The rest are Saracens, hireling, and vagrant folk, but the location is perfect — the crossing of caravan roads!”

Thomas waved imperiously for Oleg to come to, drove his horse along the road to the castle. Chachar cast a triumphant look at the wonderer who looked like a wild animal to her. She caught up with the magnificent knight and young squires briskly. Oleg hid the arrow, followed them reluctantly.

The squires shouted to the guards at the gate. One of them blew a horn, though the guards had seen them from the wall before. The squires made way respectfully for guests, including Oleg in his barbarian clothes. He couldn’t help shuddering. He had never liked strangers behind his back, especially when his soul was shrinking with a vague foreboding of evil.

The gate swung open. In their way, blocking the passage, a huge red-bearded knight stood in his armor, his helmet in the crook of right arm, his shoulder-long hair, as red as fire, ruffled slightly by the wind.

Thomas vaulted off the horse heavily with a clang of steel. The red-bearded knight came to him. They embraced with such a thunder as if two forgers thrown by giant hands collided. While they clapped each another on shoulders and shouted happily, it sounded like an iron gate being knocked out by a ram, with sparks scattering around.

“Sir Thomas!”

“Sir Gorvel!”

The squires and a handful of guards were standing around in a sparse circle, looking at the mighty warriors in silent awe. Finally, one man dared to raise his sword and cry glory to the Crusader army.

The squire took the reins of Oleg’s horse. “I’ll take them to stables,” he said with an air of importance. “You go to the servant room, have dinner there.”

Oleg nodded, jumped off and squatted, stretching his legs. He thrust the bow and quiver into his bag over shoulder. He left the axe at the saddle but took the sword. Chachar flew down as a butterfly, threw the reins gracefully to another squire.

Thomas released himself from the embrace of the read-bearded lord. “Wait, sir wonderer!” he cried to Oleg hastily. “Stop, you deaf devil! Sir Gorvel, this man is no servant to me but a brave companion-at-arms. A co-fighter, as they say in Rus’.”

Gorvel put his hands in thin mail gloves on Oleg’s shoulders in a friendly manner. “Welcome, Sir… wonderer. My castle is your castle. Please feel at home! Angles say: my home is my castle, but we are another sort of man — all wide open, our hearts on our sleeves…”

His tanned scarred face expressed astonishment: his gauntleted hands seemed to be lying on round granite boulders.

“We don’t need much,” Oleg said sulkily. “A pitch of hay for horses, a corner for us to sleep in, a slice of bread for dinner.”

Gorvel clapped on his iron hips, upset. “What is not, that is not! Poor horses will have to eat choice oats, guests — to be content with feather beds in chambers. As to dinner, we can only serve pies, sweet cookies, and sandwiches instead of bread. We’ll also find something for you to wash those dry things down your throats!”

Thomas looked at Gorvel attentively and laughed. “If you are the same, I beg you not to serve wine in barrels! Several jugs of it will be enough.”

“Of course,” Gorvel comforted him. “It’s enough… to start with!”

Chapter 7

Oleg entered the great hall and stopped for a moment, stunned by loud voices, jokes, toasts, and songs. In the bright light of blazing tar torches, at two broad tables, all the seven Franks in the company of Saracens who had turned Christians or were simply in service of Gorvel, a brave warrior, were having a feast: eating, drinking, crying out toasts.

Oleg felt their tenacious, searching looks. He knew he looked like a Frank, with his red hair, green eyes, big bones and bulging muscle, but a Frank washed suspiciously clean. His wet hair was plastered to the forehead, his clothes dusted off. Frankish knights in the land of Saracen kept up their European habits, washing their bodies fewer times a year than their Saracen servants and mercenaries, living up to Koran, did in a week. At the feast, dishes were given to dogs to lick them clean. Hounds were rushing about the hall, fighting for bones, raising their back legs to water the legs of tables and, preferably, those of guests, Chachar in particular, to mark these people as familiars.

Fiery-bearded Gorvel and Sir Thomas were seated in throne-like wooden armchairs, others on wide benches. Four people were seated separately, facing the lord: Chachar, a tall beautiful woman of breeding with tired eyes next to her, a handsome young man with a sleek face and arrogant malevolent eyes, and — as in every Christian castle — a stout monk in black cassock belted with a plain rope.

Gorvel stood up, showed Oleg (with a wide gesture that almost knocked down a servant with a tray) his place next to the monk. The latter pretended to move aside but only pulled up to himself a big jug and a plate with half of a roast boar instead.

The monk reeked of roast onions and sour wine. Oleg sat, elbowed a space for himself, reached the roast boar haunch and salted it. The salt was strangely white and fine. A servant put a wide cup in front of him, but Oleg did not move a muscle. As he ate meat, he felt being filled with strength: beastly but quiet and meek that time. Ready to obey every order of spirit, in fear of being plunged into starving, hardships and torments once again. He had never been much for drinking wine, and that was no time for it at all. He sensed a vague danger within the hall and needed his wits with him.

Gorvel and Thomas clapped on each other’s shoulders loudly, drank for the battle in Cilicia, for the fight on the walls of the Tower of David, for the victory in Terland. No mention of Jerusalem: they must have celebrated big cities before. Gorvel’s eyes glittered, his face reddened, he spoke loudly and tried to roar marching songs. Their toasts referred to small towns and keeps that, as Oleg realized, were to be followed by settlements, villages, homesteads, wells, barns and hen coops. Anyway, there was so much wine that it would suffice to drink for each stone in the Temple of Solomon and for each nail in the twenty gates of the Tower of David.

The young man winced arrogantly at Gorvel’s laughter. In times he bowed to the tall beauty’s ear and whispered something, and she nodded with her eyes down. Oleg caught only one of her looks at the handsome lad and understood much but that was none of his concerns. People play their games anywhere in the same way, though everyone thinks of self and his situation as unique. Oleg even felt relieved at the familiar sight of their looks and gestures — those two were no danger. And the monk? That one cares of his belly and nothing more. Whether Gorvel kept him half-starving or the monk’s own reason was lost to greed, but he grabbed everything he could reach, hiccupped, choked, dropped slices of meat and moved his knees apart hastily to catch them. A woman’s habit. A man accustomed to wearing pants would have moved his knees together.

Oleg knocked aside dogs that jumped over his legs. In Rus’, dogs are not allowed even to dilapidated houses. Even the poorest mongrel has an isolated doghouse, but this castle looks a great kennel!

Gorvel and Thomas roared with laughter, changing a mighty clap for a clap. They had left their armor in the armory, so their friendly slapping sounded as if a thick tree were lashed to drive a bear down from it or wild bees out of a hollow in its trunk. Gorvel’s wife shot hostile glances at her husband. The young man winced and raised his eyebrows ironically. Oleg spotted that the eyes on his young face looked very old. Then he noticed a thin netting of wrinkles, some burst blood vessels in the white of the man’s eyes, the guarded looks he cast at laughing Thomas. The merry knights recalled, in eager rivalry, what they felt while standing back to back among hundreds of Saracens. The ladders had broken, leaving them on the wall: two Christian knights against infidels…

The wine splashed on the table from Gorvel’s cup. The red-bearded lord did not mind it. He yelled, interrupted Thomas, also drunken and yelling, to find out the details, roared with laughter, demanded songs, sent for his minstrel but forgot it at once, cried for the barrels of Chios wine to be brought into. “You see, Sir Thomas, all the merchant folk drag their caravans past this place. For my protection and for the castle being built and for they, bloody suckers, crucified our Christ… That’s how I got those few barrels. Or few dozen? My steward swears they topped over hundred last week… I have deep cellars. Two scores of slaves died while digging and covering them with stone…”

“Sir Gorvel,” Thomas asked, “have you settled forever? No return to Britain?”

Gorvel stopped roaring with friendly laughter and got serious. He drained his cup in one gulp, thundered it down on the table. “My soul is Anglic! I’d rather herd cows on the banks of Don, my home river in Sheffield, than rule a kingdom here! Alas, my king commanded to build a fortress. We are few there, and Saracens as many as grits in a desert. We can be safe only in castles: Saracens are bad at taking them. Still bad…”

“You have built it quickly!”

“We had to erect a mound,” Gorvel complained. “Everything was as flat and bald as my confessor’s head! See him there at the table?.. The stone was dragged from across the river and a mile over. Lots of men drowned, but I had the rampart raised in two weeks! Only then I started to the castle.”

“A strategist decision,” Thomas praised. “You’ve seen me in battle, yeah? The King appreciates me, but he did right to bestow this land on you, to make you a lord! And I’m still a knight errant, ‘cause I’m no fit for a seignior.”

Gorvel squinted at him. “May we change places?” he asked suddenly.

Thomas shivered, as if an icicle fell under his collar. “Not for the world!” he replied ingenuously.

Gorvel burst with laughter but his eyes were sad. The monk poured the rest of the wine into his cup, sent a servant for a new jug. Gorvel commented it with assumed merriment, “Due to the caravan road, I have wines of Chios, Mazandaran, Liss, Darkover and even of Zurbagan. If they made me a watchdog, I’d rather be the one on a rich market, not in a poor village!”

Long after midnight, Gorvel’s wife, Lady Roveg, left the feast. Soon after her leave, a serving maid bent to Chachar’s ear and hinted in whisper that a decent woman should not remain in the company of drunken men anymore, as their jokes had become even more vulgar and their songs scabrous.

Chachar stood up with great reluctance. No way to say she’d heard saltier things and preferred the company of men to any other. She does not like women and they don’t like her. They offend me, being afraid of me. The maid led her to the vast chambers of Gorvel’s son, Roland, Odoacer, or Theodoric: Gorvel had not decided on the name for his firstborn son still, though he would dismiss flatly any of his wife’s hints that the stars heralded the birth of a girl.

Chachar turned and tossed in the luxurious bed for a long time: the chamber was too vast, she felt exposed, like in the middle of a city square. Sleep escaped her. Something was scratching and rustling under the bed, so she dared not to put her feet down on the floor. She wrapped herself in the blanket up with her head, but the night was too hot and stuffy, she bathed in sweat. Finally, Chachar stood up on the bed, looked around, and jumped down on the floor, trying to land as far as possible from the bed.

The single faint lamp was lighting grey squares of the stone wall, leaving the rest pitch-dark. Chachar made the wick longer. The oil blazed up, as her eyes did, when she saw a sparkling mirror in wooden frame on the wall next to her. Not the polished bronze plate in her previous home but a true bright mirror where she could really see herself!

The mirror was sided by bare daggers. A big spider sat on one of them, its belly whitish, its eyes gleaming strangely in the yellow light. Chachar stepped away warily, but not so far as to lose the sight of her reflection in the mirror. She turned around, moved her eyebrows, bent her slender waist. The roar of rude male voices and tipsy singing came from below, and she saw that the cheeks of reflected herself flashed cheerfully, her eyes lit up, her breasts rose, their hard nipples stuck against the fine fabric of her nightgown. She always felt better with men, while in the company of women she faded like a butterfly whose wings were wiped roughly off pollen.

Hesitantly, she glanced back at the dark bed, gloomy and scary to sleep alone in: she couldn’t help expecting a hairy black hand to emerge from beneath and grab her. She pushed the door, walked out warily into the dark corridor.

She saw a light moving far ahead and hurried to it until she saw a lit face, red and puffy, pieces of felt armor with iron plates sewed on. The soldier reeked of wine. He gave her an indifferent once-over, nodded at the stairs. “Still feast here in the hall! Hungry you? Come down, help need in kitchen. And you’ll gorge there!”

“Thank you, sir,” Chachar said. The old soldier, flattered by her words, threw out his chest, raised the torch proudly as if it were his lance and he were the knight riding into the royal tournament.

Chachar approached the ajar door of the big hall, peeped in cautiously. The feast was lavish but the wooden armchairs and the bench facing them empty. Gorvel’s wife and the pale young man disappeared. The monk was sitting at another table, eating and drinking for three men. He dropped goblets and copper cups, yelled obscene songs and even tried to dance.

Chachar stepped aside without being seen, slunk tip-toe along the corridor until she heard voices behind the last door. She listened, tidied her hair, opened the door ajar timidly.

In a big chamber, Gorvel and Thomas sat near the blazing fireplace. Lady Roveg was seated regally in a luxurious armchair besides. All three of them listened attentively to the young man who sang and played lute. His fingers ran across the strings briskly, his voice sounded manly and beautiful. Chachar forgave him at once his arrogant face and malevolent fishy eyes.

Thomas was the first to notice the door ajar. Chachar tried to move away, but the knight whispered something to Gorvel who replied with a broad smile. Chachar knew that sort understanding grins. Thomas stood up and, stepping as softly as he could, came out to her.

“I’m afraid,” she told him in a plaintive voice. “Can’t sleep.”

Thomas looked at her from above. He smelled of good wine, strong man’s body, sweat, and something special that made her gasp for air and her heart beat faster. She felt her cheeks flush as red roses. Thick blush covered even her neck, only her breasts, high and sensual, remained snow white. Thomas looked down involuntarily. In sweet presentiment, Chachar saw the effort it took him to take eyes off her low neck where the waving breasts rose eagerly to meet his keen gaze.

“What chamber did my friend Gorvel allot you?” he asked in a suddenly hoarse voice. His eyes turned in their sockets in spite of himself. Chachar felt his ardent gaze moving on her tender skin, leaving a red trace of blush.

“A floor above,” she answered and dropped her eyes to let the knight look where he liked to. “The chamber of his future heir.”

“Or a heiress,” he said with a hoarse laugh. “Would you… like to see round my friend’s castle? Now that you can’t sleep in such a stuffy night… Maybe a storm is coming? I also feel somewhat anxious…”

“I’ll be happy to stroll around the castle with you, Sir Thomas. The walk may help me to sleep…”

Thomas glanced back at the monstrously thick wall. “Well then… let’s start from the bottom? And finish on the watchtower, under the sky and stars. I have never seen such big stars before!”

“Neither have I,” she confessed and went first, feeling his gaze. Her cheeks were so burning that they felt nipped. She was glad she had put no excess clothing on: her well-built body, always inspiring men to reach out for it, was seen through the nightgown, even in the dim torchlight. Back at the feast, the Saracens stared at her, the red-bearded host glanced approvingly, stripping her off with his eyes, and even the fishy-eyed minstrel was looking at her too intently, to Lady Rovig’s obvious vexation!

They were descending by steep stairs. It was moist and chilly down there. Chachar kept close to Thomas: she felt creepy, and the knight walked by her side, mighty and handsome, a man from head to foot, so at the first opportunity she screamed with fear and seized his hand. So they proceeded, and she trembled and nestled up to him in fear, as the shadows thickened and moved in such a way as if this newly built castle were already haunted.

Down in the cellar, they faced a massive iron door. Thomas sniffed, his chest puffed up, he pushed the iron folds hastily. From inside, there came a cold moist air of deep underground — and such a powerful smell of wine that Thomas reeled. In the dim crimson light of the torch he held overhead, they could see three high bulging rows, as though formed by lying buffalos.

“Three rows of wine barrels!” Chachar exclaimed in astonishment. “Why does he need that much?”

“I know that man!” Thomas laughed. “He deems it an offense to drink water when there’s any wine within two miles around. And now, in his own castle by the cross of caravan roads…”

Chachar looked in the knight’s laughing face, with crimson lights dancing on it, and descended into the cellar bravely. The stairs had sharp edges, not worn still, the ground below her feet smelled of untrodden freshness. Poles and boars jutted out from the rows here and there. The wine barrels formed three rows: two along the walls and one in the middle, sided by passages as wide as a man’s arms spread: such breadth is convenient for rolling out the barrel you need. The monstrous casks of thick oaken planks were towering on each other so high that Chachar shook her head in amazement. “More than one can drink in hundred years!”

“And with friends?” Thomas asked merrily.

“Well, maybe in fifty…”

“Gorvel is a brave knight but not the one to miss profit. He always had a transport of loot following him. That’s why he’s a lord here and I’m going home. He’ll sell the wine, buy something else, then sell again… We’ll hear of a new kingdom soon, Chachar!”

He stuck the torch into an iron rest. Chachar turned to him at once, her eyes glittered. She put hands on his chest, feeling a broad curved plate of muscle under her fingers. Below it, the heart, as huge as a hammer, pounded steadily, each new beat of it stronger and faster. Chachar smiled triumphantly, reached for his lips with her own… Thomas took her by shoulders.

The ringing silence, when both of them only heard his rattling breath, was suddenly broken by heavy footsteps. Thomas glanced around, slapped involuntarily his heap where the sword hilt used to be. Two broad-shouldered warriors in gleaming iron helmets were coming downstairs to the cellar. Thomas could not see their faces, but bare swords in their hands cast ominous crimson lights around. They walked alerted, as if in search for somebody, holding their curved one-edged Saracen swords a bit slantwise, as the hirelings of East are used to. Their habits gave them out as Saracens… and good fighters.

He moved Chachar behind his back and whispered, “You know them?”

“Never saw them before…”

Thomas froze behind the barrels but the warriors could not see them. The two men walked slowly, protecting each other. Oblivious, Thomas flung his hand to the heap where fingers felt only linen fabric. However, he had a short dagger on his belt!

The warriors descended from the stairs onto the ground, stood there for a while until their eyes accommodated to the faint light. One of them whispered to another, and they went forward cautiously, bending down in a predatory way.

“Chachar,” Thomas whispered. “Crouch behind this barrel! Let them pass by, then run to the stairs”

“They’ll see me!” she mouthed.

“They’ll see me, not you.”

“But you?..”

“I’ll try to keep them. And you raise an alarm when you’re out. Or run straight to Gorvel. He’s two floors above.”

She crouched, hiding in the shade. Thomas backed, his eyes fixed on the Saracens. Something crunched under his foot. Both warriors gave a start, hurried to his side with their broad blades advanced. One had his sword in right hand, another — in the left. However, they did not rush headlong. Definitely no novices at man hunt.

Thomas ran back, hiding behind the rows of barrels. The poles crunched underfoot, marking his way. Finally, both warriors saw his gliding shadow and increased their pace — but did not broke into run as Thomas hoped them to. His heart felt wrung in the fingers of fear. Will the innocent woman have time to escape the murderers? He had no doubt those were murderers. He’d seen too much of life to confuse wine with vinegar or a priest with a vagrant.

The warriors parted and ran along the edges of the passage, all but brushing against the barrels. Thomas pulled out his dagger, turned it in hand angrily, feeling it tiny and toy-like as against a huge two-handed sword. The two of them have smaller swords, curved Arabian ones, but real swords, no toys like this.

They slowed down their pace, started coming from both sides, as far as the walls of barrels allowed, their tenacious eyes caught every move of the cornered knight. Thomas weighed the dagger in hand, recalled his friend wielding this strange weapon artfully — and hurled it into the warrior in four steps. The dagger hit his chest forcefully, rebounded, fell on the earthen floor and bounced under the barrels. The warrior recoiled. Thomas could not see his face in the shade but heard him croaking of suppressed laughter. “Bad luck?.. You should have learnt!”

His sword cut the air abruptly. The second man dashed to at once, raising his sword. Thomas pushed off strongly, jumped up on the barrel and to another one. There was a loud crack behind, a splash on his legs. The assassin cursed in Arabic, as he pulled his sword out of the cut barrel.

His companion cried, “Keep him there! I’ll bar the door. He won’t escape!”

Thomas measured by eye the distance to the one who remained beneath. The assassin smiled malevolently, waved his free hand in an invitation to come and try to take him while he was alone. He held his sword loosely, but Thomas could tell the one whose failures had added to his experience apart from a greenhorn. If only he had not thrown the dagger that stupid…

He climbed, like a monkey, on dump wooden barrels, his cheeks blushed with shame and humiliation. At four steps! By flat side! A miss would have been better than that… He wished Chachar had time to slip out while they were driving him on the very top…

He heard a clang of the door barred by the second warrior. They started to come from both sides. Thomas climbed on the topmost cask but he had barely jerked his leg away when its lower edge was cut off by blade. He jumped to save his feet, fell down, his hands found the next barrel. Another sword flashed into the cask from beneath, all but chopped off his fingers.

Thomas swore, fell, rolled over the barrel, stopped in a hollow between round sides. He heard them laughing below. One started climbing carefully, another stared at Thomas without a blink, his sword ready. The first man struck, Thomas jumped on the next barrel. The blade crunched through the wooden side, the warrior pulled it out, brandished again. Thomas crouched, ready to jump. The murderer waited, brandished several times, trying to reach him. His last blow was brisk and treacherous. Thomas flew up. He was saved by their swords being heavy, no light sabers, so he had time to evade the crushes of their sharp steel. All the same, he felt cold in his chest. The cat-and-mouse game has a single end: a mouse unable to hit back…

They were surrounding. Thomas jumping along the row, from one barrel to another, as if they were backs of giant turtles. Everything in the damp cellar was moldy or covered with slime. His legs ached of effort to keep himself from falling down.

There were three barrels ahead, then the row ended. Driven skillfully to his inescapable end, Thomas saw his death, heard his wings flapping overhead. Gathering the last of his strength, he jumped suddenly from the middle row to another. The assassin’s late strike slashed the sole of his boot. Thomas didn’t make the jump, his chest hit against the wooden edge, but he jerked his legs up instantly, got onto the barrel and rolled away. He heard a crack, then curses and gurgling, the smell of wine grew stronger. They shouted angrily and swore behind.

Thomas ran along the row, his shoulder brushing against the wall, jumped down on the ground. Limping, he rushed for the door. He heard footfall behind, but the door was already close. He seized the iron cramps, flung the bar away with a crash, seized the second one… The footsteps got so close that he, having removed the second bar and pulled the door open, was forced to dart headfirst down the stairs. A steel clanged loudly on steel, a sword swished through his hair and barely cut his ear off.

He fell, his forehead hit against the cask bottom. The door banged closed, the bars clanged again. He saw a familiar glitter on the ground between barrels, grabbed the thing before he realized what it was, heard footsteps and made, with inscrutable speed, his way onto the top of the cask wall. In surprise, Thomas gazed at his clenched fist: the hilt of his dagger was in it.

Both assassins breathed heavily. “Stop jumping as a cowardly monkey!” one said in a guttural voice. “Climb down, be a man.”

“You are not a true knight,” another accused.

“Better you come up here,” Thomas invited. His breath wheezed out, his throat was dry.

“We’ll have to.”

They started climbing on the barrels. Thomas slashed briskly the thick rope keeping the row together. Huge, monstrous wine vessels started sliding apart. At first, the warriors didn’t mind the barrels moving but then they heard a heavy rustle, a groan of dump wood. One jumped off, his sword advanced, the other was still gripping at the side of the huge barrel. It turned round slowly and rolled along with others, speeding up, so he came off, fell on his back, the sword still in hand.

Thomas hung on the scrap of the rope, as thick as a ship one, dangling in the air. The barrels were rolling apart from beneath his feet. The first assassin ran away in fear, but the heavy casks rolling down from a high row were fast to gain speed. The second one was barely up to his feet when a barrel knocked him down and rolled over him. Thomas heard his bones and skull crunch, his chest clap like a burst bull bladder, saw blood gushing from beneath the cask. In the shady cellar, the villain’s blood seemed as dark as tar.

For a moment, Thomas saw a flattened spot. Like an animal’s skin taken off and lying by the bed on the castle floor in winter. Then another barrels rolled over, thundering, pushing among themselves, and Thomas could not see the sprawled body anymore.

The first one had almost reached the wall but the enormous wine-gurgling monsters ran him down and rumpled. The casks cracked, the powerful smell of wines made Thomas’s head dizzy. He felt more drunken than ever before.

That was when he heard a thundering sound. The door shook, all but flying off its hinges. Thomas released the rope and landed with a shriek, “I’ll open, just a moment!”

His feet slipped in the puddles of wine, he fell trice, got all covered with mud, struggled up the stairs. Once he removed the bars, the door flung him away. He cried, fell back into the wine puddle. Sir Gorvel with two soldiers, all armed, appeared in the doorstep. Behind them, he heard Chachar squealing and saw a glitter of helmets, armor, and bare swords.

He felt strong hands on his shoulders, struggled up to his feet. It was Gorvel looking at him with anxiety, his eyes all but popped out. “Sir Thomas! If you wanted a spree, why alone? It’s not friendly. I’ve never treated you like that!”

Thomas shook his head drunkenly. “Oh, Sir Gorvel… Would I ever do such a thing to your wine cellar if not in a grave need?”

“Never mind the wine!” Gorvel dismissed. “What had happened? The woman was jabbering but I got not a damned thing of it, with all that wine gurgling in my head… Anyway, I’m no match for you, sir Thomas. You reek of wine as if you had some forty barrels!”

“No, only three or four,” Thomas comforted. “No more… I mean them damaged. Gave a leak… You may laugh, Sir Gorvel, but I had no lick of your wine at all…”

Gorvel roared with laughter eagerly. Sir Thomas could barely keep his feet, his eyes rolling under his forehead, his tongue tied. If soon he visited the wine cellar, the purpose must have been other than a talk of sublime love!

Afterwards Thomas was asking himself what the hell made him go to that cellar but found no reasonable answer. The only explanation he discovered was that no logics can be found where a woman is involved.

Chapter 8

Oleg was sprawled on his bed awake, fingering his charms. The faint moonlight fell through the guarded window, only part of the bed lit by it. Oleg had estimated how he would lie for sleep to keep his face away from the ghastly light.

His fingers quivered, lingering for long on small wooden figures. He felt his back creepy as he saw every road coming to a dead end. Danger on the right and on the left, above and below, looking into the window and waiting on the stairs. The charm with a double heart meant danger not only for him but for his. But who is mine here? If only not that odd knight with his noble ways… Then nothing was clear at all. Who can link me to the knight and want both of us dead? What can link us together at all?

He closed his eyes and concentrated on his feelings as he ran the wooden figures through his fingers slowly once more. A charm stuck between his thumb and forefinger — the one with the sword and arrows again! Gods persist in warning. In the daily turmoil, it is not always possible to see the signs of a coming trouble or to hear own soul: all-seeing, all-hearing, all-understanding. Sometimes the voice of soul comes in a dream, and the one wakes up enlightened, happy with having invented or discovered a thing in his sleep! Sometimes you hear it early in the morning, while still half-asleep, with your head clean and free of mundane stuff, but only a sorcerer can seclude from the world and listen to his soul. Charms are the simplest tool through which the soul can speak, give a hint or a warning…

Oleg slipped off the bed quietly, his blanket left bulging, and hid underneath. He kept fingering his charms when he heard a soft rustle outside the window. The chamber went dark as if something had screened the window. He seemed to hear a breath held, then a resonant click: Oleg knew that sound of a metal crossbow string. He uttered a short groan, pulled the dangling edge of the blanket down a little, pushed the wooden bed from beneath,

Oleg listened, slipped out briskly, a knife in hand ready for a throw. A short metal arrow was stuck in the thick head of the bed, the blanket pierced through by it. The arrow point had a deep groove in it. Oleg touched the arrow, feeling the warmth of a stranger’s palm, tugged it out. It was deep in the oaken head of the bed, almost half through it. However, the strength of the shooter’s arm could never be known with a crossbow. A child will shoot it with the same strength as a man grown. At once Oleg was near the window, seized the metal rods, strained himself. He heard the rustle of stone crumbs, then the rods bent and, with a faint grind, went off their stone jacks. The court yard was silent save cattle lowing in the barn and a young silly dog yelping behind the outhouses. The moon, with its edge nibbled, floated the sky deadly.

Oleg squeezed himself through the window, scraping his shoulders. His fingertips felt stone ledges and cracks. Gorvel’s castle was almost impregnable, as Franks saw it, but a brave skilled climber or a daredevil could climb its walls up to the roof easily. Franks will have to learn much by a bitter, gory experience. The assassins of Saracen are capable of much more than pompous European knights or simple-minded common folk.

Pressing himself to the wall, he climbed down slowly, stopping and listening. He heard someone descending on the left, hidden by salience of the tower wall. Not a very good climber: he pants, knocks on stones. To judge from the sounds, the climber was clad in mail or light armor. Definitely, he’s no Saracen: assassins always go light, nothing excessive on. They condemn Franks, even while serving them, for taking no step without a pood[9] of iron on their shoulders. He might well be a European. The one eager to learn from Saracens, otherwise he’d not dare to climb a sheer wall in the dead of night. He’d have pleaded tradition, the good Anglic sword strike, or even the valor of the Knights of the Round Table, to refuse flatly.

The stars rocked overhead, but Oleg proceeded down, into the pitch dark. The roofs and the top of walls are moonlit, while the court all covered with impenetrable black shadows cast by the walls. The top of the tethering post is glittering as a lone island in the sea of darkness.

When he smelled the ground close, the crossbowman jumped down. Oleg heard his boots on the stone paves, unclasped his hands at once, never minding the noise: his bare feet made no sound. With his heart wrung with fear, he ran across the moonlit patch in the middle of the yard, plunged head first into the salutary shade and stopped dead, listening. The heavy footsteps were far ahead.

Oleg’s eyes accommodated, and he made out the figure of a man running away, a metal glitter of his back. The crossbowman didn’t left his expensive weapon. The murderer ran up to the rampart, started climbing it. His limbs moved swiftly, as if he were a spider on the web.

Oleg sneaked slowly to the wall. The crossbowman was climbing a rope but Oleg had to make it on the bare stone, gripping at the smallest cracks and ledges. When the man screened the stars over the wall for a moment, Oleg was in the middle of it. When he reached the top himself, he heard the clatter of hooves and a muffled neigh in the dark beneath. A horse with a rider in flapping cloak burst out of the shade and galloped away from the castle.

Oleg jumped down from the very top, fell on the edge of the moat, rolled down the slope, reducing his speed. He heard crackles and crunches under his body, felt his bare feet pricked, as if some fish and bird bones had been thrown down from the castle walls for ages. The clatter of hooves was fading away fast. Oleg rushed after, unfastened his jacket at once. The earth beneath his bare feet was pleasant cool, the morning air chilly and sharp as a Damask saber. He’d get warmer in his run, so it was the cold, not the warmth, he needed to preserve. The crossbowman drove his horse in an even gallop, evidently sparing its strength for a long ride.

Few people know, while the rest are charmed by the might of horse muscle and suppressed by own laziness, that no horse can run as fast and far as man can! In a run for half a verst[10] the horse will come first, but at a longer distance it will run short of its breath or even fall, while a man can run ten versts and longer with the same speed, in full armor! Ruses were trained to run in armor, with shield and axe in hands, two-handed sword on the back, throwing knives on the belt or hidden under a flap, and akinak, a short Scythian sword, at the top of the boot. That sword was typically referred to as a knee thing for strife, abbreviated to knife.

Dust rose over the road as a subtle cloud. As Oleg ran, he glanced at either the fat-lightening sky or the distant sparkle of metal plate on the crossbow stock. The clatter of hooves was distinct in the night silence: even birds had not roused yet, no songs, and Oleg’s bare feet raised the dust without a sound.

Finally, the sound of hooves died away, but the pale light of dawn enabled Oleg to see the tracks, dim and dark on the road ahead. The far edge of the land was going pink. If the crossbowman turned aside, into the thickets, he would be easy to trace. Hoof prints, broken branches, trampled grass — all the signs for an experienced eye to know the rider’s way.

His breath burst out hoarse and hot, his throat overdried. Oleg realized he was going tired like a huge fish thrown onshore. His cave was not much for running about, so he broke off the habit to exercise. And the advantage of his previous experience would not suffice alone…

Panting of the run, he thought suddenly the crossbowman might have experience too. And there were many other dangers: a snake lurking in the rotten leaves, under a log, or within an empty horse skull…

The traces turned off the road suddenly, Oleg had barely run past but, however, he broke into the shrubs at once and saw deep hoof prints in the damp ground. He felt the coolness of stream ahead. By that sensation, Oleg could draw the twists of it, tell its depth, and name all the grasses and flowers on its banks. He heard the clatter of hooves again. The horse’s pace was even, thick blades of juicy grass crunched in its teeth.

The clouds blazed up in the sky, the dawn came down to the ground from them. The sand turned orange and shining, the rich grass sparkled with all the tints of green.

In a two or three hundred steps ahead, in the curve of the stream, a shelter of newly cut branches stood. It was made skillfully: Oleg could barely single its sloping walls out in the surrounding greenery. The rider, with a crossbow over shoulders, trotted straight to the shelter. When he was in ten steps from it, a small man in long green oriental robe went out of the bushes on the right. He had a simple bow of ash stick, with a tightly stretched string, in hand.

The rider waved his hand reassuringly from a distance. “I’m friend! You are hard to be taken by surprise, master, aren’t you?”

“How was it?” the man in green robe interrupted.

“I’ve pinned him like a toad, to the back of the bed. This Frankish crossbow makes a terrible strike! But it takes so long to draw the string with a winch… And this bloody double traction!” He vaulted off, clapped his excited horse by neck, took the saddle and harness off and shouldered them. “Good horse, fast as wind… Chukan and Gexah still there?”

“Their job is harder,” the man in robe replied. “The knight is brave, his armor always on him, even as he shits in the bushes. He has to be caught. That’s not shooting down a weaponless pilgrim!”

The rider kept his hot horse from rushing to the cold stream, slapped and patted the animal. “That pilgrim is more like a bear!” he said with displeasure. “I smelled danger, though he had no armor nor arms!”

Oleg took his throwing knives out, estimated by eye the distance to the crossbowman and his master. Oleg’s heart beat like mad, protesting against a sudden stop of the run. Big beads of sweat ran down from his forehead, broke through the dams of eyebrows to bite eyes. His fingers felt wet, he wiped them on his knees.

The man in green robe glanced with a sullen approval at the crossbowman who was leading his horse round to cool it and keep it, steamed, from drinking icy water. “It’s done. I hope it is! Chukan and Gexah never missed before… Just think: five thousand dinars for a cup! That’s fantastic!”

“In silver?” the crossbowman asked, grinning.

“In gold, you fool. A single shot earned you a thousand golden dinars! See it? Where else could you have earned that much?”

The rider shook his head in astonishment. “A thousand in gold?!”

“A thousand. Chukan and Gexah will get each that much. And two thousands are mine, for I’ve planned it all and directed you three, skilled with knives and arrows but weak at brains.”

“I don’t object,” the crossbowman said hastily. “You always had a bigger share. But we’ve never got that much… That seems queer. When we set a king with arrows, after we passed three lines of his bodyguards, we received less. And here — kill a knight and a pilgrim, take a cup… And that’s all?”

“Why should it matter? Do what they want but don’t ask why. In fact, I’ve grasped it was sufficient to take the cup only but they once had it go wrong. Either stolen or taken back…”

“I see. Dead won’t come to take it back. A thousand in gold, Ganim! For this money I shall…”

The heavy crossbow, with a long polished butt, was fidgeting on the rider’s back. Oleg waited until he turned face while leading the horse round. The knife slipped off Oleg’s hand like a silver fish. He took the second knife at once, flung into the back of the green-robed man whom the crossbowman called Ganim. The crossbowman jerked his arms up as if he wanted to fly, fell on his back, dropping the reins, and stayed motionless: his mouth wide open in a silent cry, his right eye a gurgling bloody mess, with the knife hilt jutting out of it.

The green-robed man stood with his back turned to Oleg, but some beastly feeling made him wheel round. He drew his bow at once, shot. Oleg jerked aside, caught the arrow with hand. The robed man, with his teeth bared in fury, scratched the handle of the knife sticking out in his chest: the blade had crushed through the breastbone. He started drawing his bow again. In ten steps, Oleg alerted. Ganim drew it and put down several times, seizing a moment: if the pilgrim could catch an arrow with his left hand, he could manage it with his right too…

Finally, Ganim’s fingers unclenched, he fell to his knees, half dead. The bow dropped out. His eyes flashed and faded, he fell on his side, his arm bent clumsily. A puddle of blood was spreading from beneath him. His other hand scratched the ground for a while, then stiffened.

Oleg came from aside, stopped in three steps. “You’re not dead,” he told Ganim, “leave the hilt of my knife. Turn to me.”

Ganim did not move. His quivering fingers straightened. Oleg came from his back, turned him with a knock and recoiled. Suddenly, Ganim jumped from the ground. His left hand flung a handful of earth into Oleg’s face, his right one pulled the knife out of his chest, struck, with lightning speed, the spot where Oleg was to stand. But the earth flew past Oleg, he elbowed the knife away, seized Ganim’s hand and twisted it fiercely. Ganim screamed, fell to his knees.

Oleg twisted it further. He heard bones cracking, tendons bursting with a crunch. Ganim’s face hit on the ground wet with blood. The red spilled out from his chest in an uneven trickle, pulsing in time with his quivering heart.

“I have not missed,” Oleg told him pressingly. “I wanted to ask, that’s why you are still alive… Who paid five thousands in gold?”

With effort, Ganim turned his face. It was caked in bloody mud, his eyes and mouth closed up. “You’ll be destroyed both…” he croaked. “No one can stand up to their might!”

“Names!” Oleg demanded. He twisted the enemy’s hand, the last gristles crunched, Ganim stopped twitching. His strength was drained fast with the blood loss. Oleg hit him by shoulder blade, heard a dry crunch, seized the fragments, as thin as bird bones, and started rubbing their blooded ends, with marrow flowing out of them. “Say it!” he demanded fiercely. “Say it now!”

Ganim wheezed of terrible pain, twitched, his lips foamed. Oleg seized his private parts with another hand and squeezed. The new pain made Ganim toss up, his pallid face went black, a wheezing voice escaped his lips. “I’ll say… It was… in person…”

He tossed up again, his body flinched, then stretched like a log, gave a last quiver, like grass in the wind, and froze. His face looked more awful than a strangled man’s one, his goggled eyes were full of terror. Oleg sighed, closed his eyes, folded his arms on his chest.

The crossbowman lay still. The blade had gone deep into his brain. Oleg pulled the hilt with caution, to overcome the resistance but avoid being spattered. He wiped the knives clean before putting them into covers. Both entered their nests reluctantly, like the swords of minstrels’ songs that screamed with joy (swords, not songs) each time when unsheathed and cried with grief when leaving the battle.

Searching the shelter of branches, he found a well-hidden leather bag with gold coins, weighed it in hand. If these are golden dinars, they number in no less than five thousand… Someone is craving for the cup desperately. So craving that he ordered to kill two in his way: a knight, hero of the capture of Jerusalem, and a peaceful pilgrim. Now the knight must be beating off two killers, if still alive. He might have been invincible in jousting and heroic as a member of attaching knightly force, but the assassins of Saracen were harder nuts to crack. The poor knight may already be wheezing with his throat cut, shedding his hot blood on the ground…

He hid the gold in a different place, went walking around the shelter in broadening circles. He saw lots of hoof prints. On the wet ground near the stream they were so distinct that he could easily count every nail and dent in the iron horseshoes. However, the sun rose high in the sky before he identified the horse of the mysterious employer, the one who had brought five thousands of golden dinars.

As Oleg ran, he looked at the tracks on the earth and patches of trampled grass, listened to the birds crying and grasshoppers chirring. A steppe is a whole being. An experienced ear on the one end of it will grasp easily what is going on another.

He made wide steps, his elbows stuck out a bit to let his chest breath deep and mighty in, without his heart being squeezed. In hundred steps on the left, a magpie flew out of a bush and screamed indignantly. At once, Oleg slowed his run down to a walk, his eyes fixed on the suspicious bush, his hand on the knife hilt.

His eyes were still on the veil of green leaves, trying to penetrate through the bush, when he heard a soft voice behind, “Here, slave!”

From behind a thick log, a dried-up sinewy man stood up, clad in a thin mail with wide collar. He had a curved sword on his belt and bow in hands, an arrow on the string. Oleg recognized Ternak, a slave hunter who had impeded his homecoming and had Abdulla bring him to the stone quarry of Baron Otset.

“Didn’t expect?” Ternak flung out, his eyes narrowed fiercely. His upper lip jerked up in a predatory smile, baring yellow teeth. “Was it you, with that blockhead knight, who raised the mutiny? Though it doesn’t matter anymore. The castle now has another master. I see you managed to kill Ganim and his man. I had little love for them, but even less I have for ones successful in killing such…”

He failed to find a proper word. In that time, his hands drew the bow string. He expected fear in the face of the runaway slave, desired it, but Oleg kept his expression as impenetrable as he could, despite his thoughts jumping like gudgeons on a hot pan. How Ternak happened to be there? Did he follow us all the way?

“Was it you to hire Ganim?” he asked without a move.

Ternak smirked, his eyes blazed with malevolence. “In Hell, they know all. Ask them!” He aimed at Oleg, the pointed arrowhead shifting between his face and breast.

Oleg did not move. “Why does your partner hide? He might have come out now.”

“What partner?”

“In that bush. A magpie flew out,” Oleg pointed with his finger.

Ternak did not move an eye, replied with a smirk. “I’m no greenhorn to be entrapped that easy.”

The bow string clicked. Oleg jerked aside. He would have caught the arrow flying, but changed his mind at the last moment: what use of arrow in hand if Ternak draws his sword out? — so his hand reached the throwing knife.

Ternak appeared to know fighting ways. Oleg was late to grasp it. He felt a strike on his side, touched the hurt place: the arrow stuck out there! Ternak smiled, happy of his outwit, bow still in hands, but his smile seemed to be curved in wood: the knife was deep in his breast.

Oleg came up to him, kicked the bow aside. Pain spread in his side, blood trickled down his clothes, dripped on the dry ground. Clenching his teeth, he felt the arrow and flesh around it. With relief, he found out that the iron arrowhead had slid along his rib, scratching it. There was a swollen bump under his skin on the other side, like a nut hidden there.

Holding his breath, he pushed the arrow deeper in and almost broke his neck, trying to see the place where the arrowhead would come out. The bump swelled and stretched, glittering in the burning sun — and suddenly sank, pierced from inside by a sharp metal point, red with blood spurting out from that new wound. Oleg moved the arrow further quickly until its jaggy head was all out. Swearing quietly, he broke the wooden shaft, pulled it out from the other side. The blood was gushing, released, from both ends of the through wound. Oleg bent hastily over the dead man, to use the thin cloth of his turban as dressing.

A low voice, resembling a roar, ordered sullenly from behind, “Stand still! No dressing.”

Oleg turned round slowly. From behind the bush on his left — the one from which the scared magpie had flown out — Gorvel’s minstrel stood up. He was in travelling clothes, his pale malevolent face alerted, his eyes catching every move of Oleg, a small bow of aurochs horn in hands, a curved sword and long narrow dagger on his belt. Oleg cast a helpless glance on his knife, hilt-deep in Ternak’s chest. The singer caught his sight and nodded. “Leave it be. And don’t move. I love to watch the blood pour out. Even if I was not the one to shed it.”

He smiled malevolently. Oleg saw triumph and delight in his swamp-greenish eyes. The singer could have killed him by shot in back through the bush, but then the bloody pilgrim would have died unaware of his killer, in no torments — and now he’ll realize that, though he killed Ternak, Ganim and his man, there are even more strong and skilled ones. The strong and skilled minstrel will walk around while the pilgrim’s bones will be dragged by animals…

“Did you hire Ganim?” Oleg asked in a depressed voice. He staggered, blood trickled down his leg to soak into the dry ground. He felt hot and wet within his boot.

The minstrel did not reply. He bared his teeth, drew the bow slowly, looking straight in Oleg’s eyes. Several times he released the string and drew again. Despite the smirk, his eyes were guarded. They caught every smallest move of the pilgrim’s muscle. Oleg tried to swing aside but his side burst with pain, his legs gave way. He heard ringing in his ears. It’s the loss of blood. He felt his face going pallid — and saw it in the minstrel’s smirk, his triumphant eyes. “I’ll make a cup of your skull!” the singer promised. “You were a mighty warrior…”

“Did you hire him?” Oleg saw the singer’s smirk and glittering eyes, the rest blurred with hot haze. Suddenly he glimpsed a movement out of the corner of his left eye, looked there asquint. As Ternak had gripped the hilt of the knife in his chest, he was still holding it, his fingers weakening, losing touch with it one by one. In a moment, his hand would fall down into the grass. “Ternak,” Oleg said insistently, “throw the knife at him!”

The minstrel glanced there askew. Ternak’s hand fell with a noise, burying itself in the grass. The singer shot briskly. His arrow struck Ternak heavily under his thrown-up chin, went in almost feather-deep.

Oleg jumped back and aside once the arrow left the bow string. He fell into a gully, broke through bushes, rolled down in a ball until he reached the bottom. The thicket softened his fall. He hastened to climb above and aside, feeling giddy, big black flies rushing before his eyes, his blood dripping on the grass. Twisting, he pulled out his second knife, gripped the hilt. The minstrel was sure he had left his only knife in Ternak’s body. Oleg had made him think so while devouring that knife with eyes. Now he had a little chance to outwit the minstrel who proved out to be a skilled and experienced assassin, those three killers no match for him. It’s strange he has to wander in the likeness of a singer…

He heard a rustle above. Minstrel was coming slowly down the slope, bow in hands, arrow on the string. He kept his eyes on the blood stains on the ground and leaves while walking carefully, not running. He stared at each blade of grass, his eyes, a match for Oleg’s, missed neither a grasshopper jumping nor a lizard darting in the grass. Meanwhile, he seemed to notice what was going on around him and even behind.

Oleg clapped himself mentally on the shoulder: he had left the bottom of the gully on time. He lay hidden in the grass, almost in the open space. Such places are never looked upon closely when sided by thick bushes. A wounded prey would usually hide behind branches, so the minstrel kept away from the shrubs, his hands ready to shoot an arrow at any suspicious move.

Oleg felt his face muddy. He got dirty all over, like a pig, while crawling on his belly along the bed of a lately dried-up stream, but that made him lost to view among boulders, grey and muddy the same. His body was plastered with leaves and dry grass blades, the clots of earth dangling from his cheeks.

The minstrel stepped with caution. He not only looked at the bloody trace but glanced around. The red stains led him to the logs that had kept Oleg in his fall. The four of them, with their branches tangled, made a perfect hide. The singer’s lips curved in a ghost of a triumphant smirk but he kept moving on in a guarded and tenacious way. He was an excellent hunter, easy to trace and kill a wounded bear or even a lion.

Oleg lay, clinging to the ground, hardly daring to breath. With his left ear pressed to the ground, he heard every step, every move. He could not see the minstrel but his intuition informed that he had passed by and was leaving.

Oleg raised himself a little on trembling arms and saw a bent back in twenty steps ahead. The singer was sneaking, ready to wheel round at any moment, to jump aside or fall where the shrubs would protect him. He had the bow half-drawn while peering at the tangle of roots and branches of stout fallen trees. The iron arrowhead glittered like a wet tongue of a big snake.

Oleg struggled up, trying not to step on his right leg, numb and disobeying. The singer made ten more steps away. Oleg aimed clumsily, as if it were his first throw in a lifetime, and flung the knife. Everything went dark before his eyes, he lurched and stretched his arms, trying to keep his feet.

He heard a convulsive sob ahead. The minstrel wheeled round, his arrow flew over Oleg’s head. The singer’s eyes were goggled and mad, the last blood flowed away from his cheeks, and his face went pallid yellow. He seized a second arrow briskly, shot at Oleg. A click — and the arrow missed. The minstrel bared his teeth, reeled, blood trickled out of his mouth. He kneeled slowly, staring at Oleg with astonishment. The bow slipped off and down into the grass.

Oleg came up, limping heavily, dragging his foot. The minstrel coughed, spattering blood on his chin. “You did it…” he croaked. “I underestimated…”

“Who sent you?” Oleg demanded.

The minstrel waved his head a little, his eyes flashed. “You won’t make me… I’m dying…”

Oleg nodded sullenly. If the knife struck where it should have, then the point of the blade had cut through the spinal muscle and into the heart. “Should I burn or bury you?” Oleg asked.

The blood was gushing out from the singer’s mouth unevenly, as his heart clung to life still. His breast rose heavily, with a squelch inside, as if a big fish were splashing there. “I worship fire,” he said in a fading voice.

“All the four elements are sacred,” Oleg added at once. “I can bury you according to your rite. Would you say it?”

The minstrel’s eyes were closing, as he rocked on his knees. Oleg barely heard him whisper, “Take my sword… Worth forty cows and two horses…”

“In the name of Zarathustra,” Oleg demanded in Farsi. “Who sent you?”

“The Lords of the World…”

He fell face first, already dead. Oleg tugged the knife out of his back — it had actually reached the heart! — and wiped on the minstrel’s shoulder. He took some gold coins that he found in the dead man’s pocket before starting a hard climb above. Although his bleeding had stopped, he felt too weak to defend against a sparrow. He would have not been able to bury the singer in European way if even he wanted to. Luckily, the faith of fire worshippers prohibits the bodies to be buried in earth, burnt or thrown into water: as all the four elements are sacred, they should not be defiled by corpses. A dead body should be left open for the predatory birds and animals to bury it in their stomachs, with the remainders picked up by ants and bugs.

He fainted twice until he came back to the shelter. The bodies of Ganim and crossbowman were all covered with a quilt of green flies, and big yellow ants had trodden ways to them. While the ants rushed to the bodies, their bellies were tucked in. Those who returned had their bellies swollen, red fibers of flesh in their tiny jaws.

The horses snorted, backed from the man covered with blood. Oleg raked out the bag of gold coins, cursing himself for having hidden it that deep, tied it across the saddle of Ganim’s horse and mounted, with great difficulty, the crossbowman’s one.

When he rode up to the gate of Gorvel’s castle, he found guards with naked swords waiting for him. The gate swung open hastily. Gorvel hurried to meet Oleg, helped him to dismount. The face of the red-bearded lord was grim, his eyes flashed like lightnings. He clenched his fists and roared at the guards.

Thomas came rushing, in full armor, only his visor up. “Been in a fight, sir wonderer?” he cried anxiously from the distance. “Is anyone left there?”

“Your minstrel with friends,” Oleg replied gloomily. He was combating sickness with the last of his strength. “If you want their songs… you’ll have to go there. They are not likely… to climb out of the gully soon.”

Chapter 9

They lingered at Gorvel’s for two more days and nights. The lord yelled, insisting on two weeks, referring to the terrible wound of Sir Wonderer, which the joys of feast and hunt should help to heal. However, to Gorvel’s distress, the wounds of Pagan (whom that pilgrim no doubt was) were healing surprisingly fast, due to Christ’s inexplicable mercy. In the second morning, the wound was replaced by a hideous scar, which, in turn, was subsiding before their very eyes, losing its bluish color, whitening to match the rest of skin.

Gorvel glowered at the wonderer. The knight’s world had been clear and simple before Sir Thomas, his companion-at-arms, and this Pagan pilgrim arrived: that was a beginning to strange things. His minstrel disappeared and turned out to be an assassin… But he was a wonderful singer indeed! Let me, Sir Gorvel, be a blockhead who knows nothing of poetry, but Lady Roveg also enjoyed that strange man singing! And his lady might have been wrong too — just a woman! — but other lordly knights would reward him for his songs and win him from each another! Gorvel failed to understand what could have make the pampered minstrel leave his warm seat by fireplace and go out into the night to hunt a stranger…

And the person of pilgrim calls forth even more questions. If his scars resolved that fast, his smooth skin might have already had some more terrible wounds resolved on it. Wounds of wandering and fighting. The one who has them is usually no stranger to sword. And arrows… he was good with them too, as Sir Thomas and that woman, Chachar, had told Gorvel with delight. The odd pilgrim hardly could have mastered archery in peaceful prayers, fasts or contemplations of navel!

The minstrel was talked over for a while and forgotten, but the excited rumors of five thousand gold dinars taken by the wonderer from villains were still on. The confessor monk, in a heat of temper, abused the Mother of God, for she had given such wealth to a Pagan. Thomas interceded for the Holy Virgin and all but beat the fool up. Gorvel reminded them sullenly that villains had not been giving their gold at will and not any man could have taken it that way. Definitely, the pilgrim was helped by Holy Virgin. Perhaps he’s not a hopeless Pagan. The Virgin is no fool, she sees a future Christian in him. He may already be somewhat Christian, though unaware of it himself!

On the same day when Oleg came riding back to the castle, reeling in the saddle, he asked Thomas, “Think of your powerful enemies. Do you have any?”

Chachar was dressing his wounded side with care, admiring the strength of muscle. Thomas poured wine into the wonderer’s cup, his brow contracted. “Well… maybe Sir Gregor the Splendid… Or rather Sir Baldan. In a joust, I threw him off. He fell straight down to the feet of peerless Burnilda…. Down into the mud, at full tilt…”

“Not your sworn enemies. Powerful ones!”

“Er… I had no quarrel with kings. As far as I remember…”

He knitted his brows in suffering, as he recalled everyone whose foot he had ever stepped on or whom he had elbowed. Oleg listened with half an ear. No king is obeyed in such a blind, thoughtless way. That was the way Saracen assassins obeyed their sheikhs, but the minstrel was a pure Frank. So was Ganim, though disguised into green Saracen robe. Franks are free and proud. Not the stuff to make fanatics. Young Europe was not entangled in the net of secret societies yet, unlike the ancient East wallowing in mysticism, sacraments, prophecies, search of astral ways for mankind… and not shunning mundane poisons and murders on the sly.

His blood rushed back. He heard Chachar’s anxious voice, as though muffled by wadding. “It hurts?.. Have a little more patience, please…”

Stop lying to yourself, he thought bitterly. It’s clear whom the minstrel meant by the Lords of the World: The Secret Seven. Immortal sorcerers, they know no defeat and have a clear goal. Politicians, no starry-eyed dreamers. With their millstones, they mill whole kingdoms, empires, peoples, nations, religions, and beliefs. Killing a hero, a king or an emperor is the same to them as squashing a greenfly. “Go have a rest,” he told Chachar. “Go, don’t growl… I need a man-to-man talk with Sir Thomas.”

Her beautiful eyes filled with tears at once. The dam of eyelids could hardly keep the glittering liquid in. Thomas looked helplessly at Oleg.

“Chachar!” the wonderer said through gritted teeth and the dam broke, waterfalls of tears gushed down her pale cheeks, but his voice was so strange that she fled as if blown out by wind.

Anxious, Thomas sat down on the bed next to Oleg. “Does it hurt badly?”

“Sir Thomas, do you know that your cup is pursued… not by ordinary burglars?”

Thomas thought it over, shrugged melancholically. “No, but… what’s the difference?”

Oleg clenched his jaws bitterly, waiting for a pang to pass. He sent a mental order to clean the blood — it would prevent fester — and heated the wound up. It was painful that way, but faster to heal. “The cup is pursued by powerful ones,” he said in a different voice. “Now they send assassins, villains and burglars… but some day they’ll come for it themselves. Maybe you refuse it? And save your life?”

Thomas looked straight at his friend. “Thank you. But why do you think life so dear? Honor is dearer, truth is dearer, love is dearer. Many things are dearer than our brief lives. Why would I stick to such a small thing? Whoever wants the cup, they are welcome to try. I’ll be defending it.”

Oleg looked around, moved his head close to Thomas. “Then I’ll tell you,” he said in a soft voice, “who wants the cup. Maybe you tell me why they want it. Think it over once again. Perhaps you’ll change your mind and refuse it… If you do, Thomas, I shan’t blame you! The enemies are invincible. They are Seven Secret Sages. In fact it is them ruling the world. Kings, emperors, sultans, and shahs are no more than pawns on their chessboard!”

Thomas looked with doubt, but his cheeks flushed hot despite his will, his face lit up. He moved closer, leaned to Oleg who continued in a whisper, “They are immortal. They can be killed, but otherwise live forever. They’ve seen the birth, prosperity, and ruin of many great ancient empires, and they understand the secret, concealed causes of rise and failure of peoples and kingdoms better than anyone. As they’ve lived thousands of years, they mastered the secrets of power. Step by step, they have learnt to influence the development of realms, to bring some of them to prosperity and others — to ruin. You won’t believe, but sometimes it was enough to make a scuffle on a particular day and hour in a market — and the result was the death of ancient ruling house, of the kingdom… and a new one, strong, young and healthy, sprouted up in the outlying districts. The new state was usually more just and worthy. Yes, as a rule, the Seven destroy cruel realms and approve of kinder ones. They support nations with kind, merciful morals and manners…”

“Do they worship Christ?” Thomas interrupted.

Oleg faltered, his brows knitted painfully while he thought of the answer. The knight watched his face with strain. He could not fathom what the difficulty was. Those who worship Christ are friends, the rest are infidel Pagans.

“In general… they do. If to consider the whole of it. Even before The Nativity, as you know, the world was not in the hands of Satan. It was created and watched by God, and His Son came to help his elderly Father. But for the Secret Seven, Christ is not that important… Keep your temper! They saw the world that heard nothing of Christ and they’ll see His next Coming if it occurs… I’d rather have you bothered not with their vision of the future world but with the danger to yourself. You can’t stand up to such powerful men — magicians, I mean — as your enemies! And there is something more…”

He sighed, his face went grey. Thomas moved close to him. The darkness seemed to be gathering in the room. “In ancient times, magic was powerful,” Oleg croaked. “Very little remained of it now, but the Secret Seven come from those times! They know many powerful secrets. I know no mortals, no kings or heroes who could stand up to… or merely fight them!” His face looked pinch and dolorous.

Thomas felt a hot tenderness for the lone wonderer. He stretched his arm involuntarily to embrace Oleg’s shoulders. “Sir wonderer! It’s always possible to fight.”

“To fight,” Oleg repeated sadly, “knowing that you’ll die?”

“Didn’t Roland know it? And Beowulf who stepped ahead to meet his death? And thousands of other valiant heroes who died with fame? They knew life is short and fame is eternal. Sir wonderer, if even those Secret Seven are ancient Pagan gods, I have no fear of them. They may kill me, but they’ll never have me giving the Holy Grail away at will…”

Something in the knight’s voice made Oleg ask warily, “You don’t believe in them, do you?”

Thomas hesitated for a while, replied with his eyes looking aside, “I believe in dangerous enemies. But magic… I believe the world has it. I believe in three-headed men, flying fish and speaking horses that live overseas… as otherwise the life’s too boring to bear it. But, dear sir wonderer, I don’t believe that wonders can happen to me or in places I visit.” His eyes were honest, simple-minded.

Oleg sighed. “A lovely world-view! European from withers to hooves. Step aside, old empires, make way for new people… But I advise you to think over what I told you. The world has no wonders, but in this only case they may… no, they will happen if the cup is not taken by their hirelings or thieves before.”

Thomas stood up. With a menacing look on his face, he tapped the sword hilt. His gauntlet was tinkling “They are welcome to try! Isn’t that a nail sprinkled with Christ’s blood? Isn’t there true wood of His Cross in the handle?”

Oleg winced. “Stop it, Thomas. It’s false.”

Thomas recoiled. “How you… How dare you talk that?!”

“Do you know wood? Tell me what kind it is.”

“Oak!” Thomas said with confidence. “One has to be blind to miss it. What’s the hilt of a noble knight’s sword to be made of if not old fumed oak, the noble among trees?”

“Hum… A hilt — yes, but a cross… You won’t drive a nail into it, only get your fingers cut. Your god was crucified on the cross of aspen! In general, your faith is strangely hostile to this tree. Asp was the only tree that did not bent its branches to greet your god in his escape to Egypt. And while he was led to Calvary, only the asp did not tremble with pity and compassion! All the other trees are said to have brought down their branches and leaves! Surely that’s a lie. And he was flogged by the twigs of asp. His cross, as I’ve said, was made of asp too. Besides, it was the tree for Judas to hang himself…”

Thomas gasped at his words. Oleg muttered thoughtfully, “What a stubborn tree! Trembles with fear but stands its ground. A proud one! It began as early as the creation of the world. Asp was the only tree to refuse doing some work then, while all the other trees did it… In Rus’, we never hide from a storm under an asp, for Peroun casts a lightning in it to kill a demon — that lot always hide under asps. Once the strike of his lightning was so powerful that the tree got spattered with the demon’s blood all over. That was how the asp got its reddish color of leaves. And it has one more reason for trembling: demons sleep beneath its roots and scratch their backs on them. Asp stakes are driven into vampires, as you know…”

His voice broke into whisper. He spoke to himself, Thomas forgotten. The knight held his breath. How can the wonderer know the details of Flagellation and Crucifixion? The regiment prelate once told him that one of the witnesses still walked around… Is it true?

The night made the castle walls cold, its gloomy halls chilly, as it is common for desert lands in summer: hot days make you drip with sweat, you can bake an egg in the sand, but once the night comes, your teeth start chattering with cold.

Oleg found Chachar near a fireplace blazing hot. She sat on a small bench facing the fire, throwing chocks into it. With her face washed clean, she looked as fresh and healthy as a sweet juicy apple. Her boots stood on the iron fireguard, her bare feet were buried in a beast’s skin on the floor.

She raised her face, reddened with heat, to look at the wonderer. Lovely tender dimples played on her cheeks. “Dear Oleg, you must be in bed! Your wound…”

“…healed as a dog’s one,” Oleg dismissed. “I’m no highborn to have them healing for ages. We’ve been here for two days. A guest must not outstay his welcome. Is Gorvel here? Or left for hunting?”

Chachar glanced around in fright and whispered, “Have you heard? A strange rider came tonight. Sir Gorvel locked up in his chambers to talk to him. Even Lady Roveg wasn’t allowed.”

“Gorvel has much to care of,” Oleg muttered, his heart wrung with foreboding. “And this place is no peaceful! Perhaps the king sent his vassals a word that Saracens prepare an attack.”

“But they argued! In shouts!” Chachar glanced around again, her whisper even more mysterious. “I was walking past the door by chance. The visitor demanded something. Once refused, he went yelling, threatened the lord!”

“Did you hear it well?”

“My lace got undone, so I stopped to tie it. I leaned over and… just happened to see them through a keyhole. Gorvel had a humble, miserable face. Would you believe it? I think no man should be humiliated like that. Never! A man deprived of his pride is no man anymore.”

“What did the visitor demand?” Oleg hurried her up.

“I didn’t get it. I only saw a strange sign: he draw a circle in the air with his hand, and then… er… maybe a cross. And that made Gorvel blanch and bow to him. It was his stupid wife treating him like that before! And that minstrel… I understood all of it! Yesterday I heard Lady Roveg reproaching him for his lack of skill to build a proper castle. I could barely help shouting at her, ‘Do you have the skill, stupid woman?’ A true woman demands nothing: a man will give her everything he can at his own will. He needs to be supported, comforted, helped…”

“Is that man still at Gorvel’s?” Oleg asked tensely.

“They say he left before dawn.” Her face was serene. Red lights from the blazing fire played on it, being reflected in her big gleaming eyes like a scatter of sparks. Her cheeks were as red as if she had a good sleep all the night long. Maybe she’s a sleepwalker? But that lot fails to recall their nightly adventures…

“Where’s Sir Thomas?”

“In the great hall,” she replied in vexation. Red sparkles in her eyes turned green. “He found some special sword. Now busy trying it at the senior guard.”

At that moment Oleg grasped the meaning of thundering, clanging, and panting sounds from below. He also heard rude male voices, marking the best or the most violent blows with roar and shouts. Oleg nodded to Chachar and went there, guided by the clang of steel and the strong smell of man’s sweat.

When he entered the great hall, it was full with roar and glitter of steel. The bright rays of the morning sun struggled throw the narrow windows. In the smoky semi-darkness, there were four men jumping and brandishing steel: Thomas fought three Gorvel’s men. He had a triangle iron shield in hand, and the huge sword in another moved so briskly that he seemed fenced with a shiny wall of cold steel.

“Thomas!” Oleg cried insistently. “We have to talk to the host!”

Thomas dodged a blow and parried two more with a shield. “You are his guest as well!” he cried back merrily.

“I need you.”

The soldiers grumbled. Oleg felt their hostile looks from all sides. Someone abused (in half a voice but loud enough for him to hear) the pigheaded prying pilgrims. “This year is good with acorns, but they keep grunting still…”

Disappointed, Thomas flung his sword to a soldier. The man caught it by hilt in the air. The rest saw Thomas to the stairs: crying out, banging with their swords hilts on shields. Oleg and Thomas hurried up to the second floor.

In front of Gorvel’s chambers, a soldier was walking to and fro, yawning, rubbing his sleepy eyes with fists. He livened up at the sight of them. “Relief?.. Oh, that’s you… Want the master?”

“Yes,” Thomas grunted. “Is he in?”

“Lady Roveg is. And Sir Gorvel left in the morning.”

A vacant smile was blown off Thomas’s face at once. Oleg pushed the door before the soldier could stop him. The friends rushed into the bedchamber.

Lady Roveg, with her eyes red and tearful, was rummaging in a big ornate box. Two likes of it stood open on a bench, one more — on the floor. As she heard footsteps, she recoiled in fright, moving somewhat alike a furious cat. At the sight of Thomas and Oleg and the guard running at their heels, she clasped her hands and gabbled out, “A trouble, Sir Thomas! My lord husband is gone!”

Thomas made a helpless gesture, glanced at Oleg who was gloomy as night, then waved to the guard. “It’s all right. You guard outside. Leave us!.. Lady Roveg, could he leave for hunting? He invited me there too, I recall…”

“He was going to!” Lady Roveg replied, her voice constrained with fury. “Just going to, as he had not a single day free! So busy with building… He made no step outside the castle gate since we came to this wild land! Even wenches… he had enough of them in the kitchen and servant rooms.”

Oleg coughed, asked softly, “What’s in the boxes?”

She wheeled round to him, swift as a forest predator, her eyes narrowed wildly. “Yesterday there were family jewels! Mine, as I was born the princess of Bodrik! I brought him, a poor knight with a long sword, my diamonds, golden earrings, chains with pendants of emerald, not to mention plain gold…”

“Any of servants?” Thomas asked, startled, his hand feeling the sword hilt nervously.

“Sir Thomas! Can’t you believe that a knight can have less honor than a servant?.. No one entered the chambers but a strange man last night. He had a long talk with my husband, but my jewels were all in place after he left!”

“Did you suspect him?” Oleg asked at once.

She shook her head arrogantly. “Definitely not. He had a lord’s face. Not the sort of man to stoop to a theft. Such men can take away but not steal… That’s just my habit to finger my jewels before going to sleep. No occasion to wear them in these backwoods, so I simply take and touch and shift them from place to place…”

Oleg took in the room at a glance. The hook on which Gorvel used to hang his sword was empty. “Sir Thomas, is our bag of gold at place?”

Thomas got pale with indignation. “How dare you think that? Of a noble knight!”

“Hasn’t he robbed his wife?”

Thomas shot a sharp glance at him and ran out. His iron feet made a brisk thunder on the stone stairs. Lady Roveg clenched her firsts in anger, her knuckles went white. “You are,” she told Oleg suddenly, “as far as I see, a sort of Pagan confessor to Sir Thomas?”

“Not quite so…”

“Details don’t matter,” she dismissed, still angry. “As a priest, you must know men better than their arms. Please tell me: would Sir Thomas take my offer to stay as a lord of this castle?”

Oleg recoiled. “But the tenure…”

“The King bestowed this land on a mighty knight, not namely Gorvel! The one able to build a castle and keep the lands under the reign of Christ’s warriors. The King doesn’t mind names. He minds the lord to be Christian, have real power, keep Saracen in awe!”

Oleg hesitated for a while, offered warily, “He’ll be back in a moment. Better ask him.”

“And who is that… Chachar?” she asked shrilly. Her beautiful eyes narrowed to slits.

“Hmmm… a woman. We saved her from villains. She asked to take her to any big city.”

“She can stay here and work in kitchen. No, though… If Sir Thomas stays, she will have to leave. She behaves too bluntly.”

“I’ll take her away,” Oleg promised hastily. “She likes handsome men, that’s all.”

“All women like such knights as Sir Thomas. But I don’t behave that… natural, do I?”

They heard hurried steps behind the door. Thomas burst in like a hurricane, blared from the doorstep, “Sir wonderer, you’ve slandered the noblest of warriors! We, back to back, on the wall of Jerusalem… He’s a man of great honor!”

Oleg was going pallid, his body numb with cold. Thomas fell silent on half a word, his eyebrows rose in surprise. “What else?”

“Sir Thomas… Have you told anyone of the cup?”

Thomas seemed to have been windblown away at once. A thundering fast clatter on the stairs, as if some iron balls spilled over them, died away in a moment. Oleg did not move. He felt miserable — and surprised of it: that was none of his concerns. The Holy Grail was a sacred thing of Christian faith that was hostile to him. The votaries of Christ were guilty of trampling on his ancient Slavic faith, of destroying the priests of great Rod, the god of all that exists…

Lady Roveg stiffened, her confused gaze shifted between the pale wonderer and the open door. Her fingers moved on the lid of the box involuntarily, following the intricate ornament.

Thomas broke in like no hurricane but an avalanche. His face was scary, with lips bluish and eyes popped out. “It’s… gone!”

“Gorvel,” Oleg whispered heavily as if his breast were heaped with stones. “What made him do it? Did they…”

Thomas croaked, in more torture than the worst sinners in the Hell suffered, “Gorvel is a man of great honor… We stood back to back! We covered selves by a single skin, shared the last loaf of bread…”

Oleg cast a wary look at the motionless lady: her face was perplexed. He took Thomas carefully by iron shoulder. “Gorvel would have refused the King if he commanded it, I believe. But there are other lords whom I told you of. Their orders are always obeyed.”

Thomas staggered to the table, collapsed on the bench. His head dropped on the table with a clang of helmet. “You speak to gods… Please help me! Tell me what to do!”

Lady Roveg came to him with a sympathetic look. “Poor Sir Thomas… Perhaps the counsel of my confessor will help you?” Behind Thomas’s back, she made a gesture to Oleg as if throwing a cockroach out of the window. Her delicate hands lay on Thomas’s iron shoulders, yellow lights flared up in her eyes.

Oleg coughed, said in a hoarse voice, “I’ve been fighting the Seven. And I’m alive, you see… I’m going to saddle horses. And you, noble knight, have much to discuss with this highborn lady.” He went out briskly, knocked the door shut behind. The guard jumped up, grasped his sword. Oleg showed empty hands to him, ran downstairs.

Chachar was still drying her boots, singing merrily in a thin squeaky voice. The fire was blazing so hot as if she wanted to burn the whole castle. As Oleg crossed the hall briskly, he flung out, “Go pack your things! Now!”

“What? But…”

“Don’t be late, or we’ll leave without you!”

She bit her lip but fled to her room like a scared she-goat, with no word against. The wonderer was not like himself, his face contorted. He seemed to have rolled up into a tight ball, with nothing but claws, thorns, and sharp fangs looking out.

In the stables, he was told by an old stableman that Gorvel’s beloved stallion had vanished that morning. The destrier was tendered and cared of since he had carried wounded Gorvel out of the battle for the Tower of David. He hooved the Saracens who tried to catch him, broke through their lines, and took the fainted knight to the positions of European hosts. Since then, the stallion was allotted a special stall and a special groom. Gorvel would only ride him on the biggest occasions. Now the stall was empty, though that beast with luxuriant mane would allow no one close but his master!

Oleg led his stallion out in no hurry, saddled him, loaded the remounts with bags. Chachar had got tired of fidgeting on her bay mare while Oleg harnessed Thomas’s warhorse in the same sullen way, tightened the girths, checked the saddle hooks. He seemed to know the very moment of the knight’s breaking away from the tenacious grip of the fair lady.

Chachar went as dark as a thundercloud, scowled, her big eyes glittered with tears and fright. Once Oleg mounted, the door of the castle flew wide open as if rammed from inside. Thomas almost rolled down the stone stairs, as though some ghosts were after him.

On the last stair, the knight lowered his visor. He mounted heavily, galloped to the gate in silence. Oleg trotted after him and smelled an invisible trail of woman’s perfume after Thomas. He glanced at Chachar: she had bit her lip, the dam of tears broken, wet glitter on her cheeks. If he smelled the fragrance, then she, a woman to her fingertips, could discern every tone of it…

The castle gate swung open, horse hooves thundered on the planks of the bridge. The road from the castle ran straight to the west, but Oleg reined up and pointed at hoof prints, “He went east. As he was bound to!”

He turned his horse. Thomas and Chachar followed him obediently. Thomas obviously wanted to escape the vicinity of blubbery Chachar, so he caught up with Oleg hastily. “Sir wonderer, you did know it!” the knight accused, with his visor down.

“What?”

“What Lady Roveg needed! You could have helped your friend… er… escape that burden of talk.”

“And let her have me crucified on the gate? I’m no highborn knight, just a pilgrim in search of my way to gods… However, in this land knights are crucified as well. Or thrown into stone pits.”

“Sir wonderer… I hate distressing women! We knights were created by God to protect the weak, and women are the weakest and most tender creatures on earth. But I… I had to offend Lady Roveg meanly! I confessed being betrothed to Lady Krizhina, the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Oleg said with sympathy, “The Saracen have found a way: their law permits to have up to four wives. Though we have always kept this way. A Slav could take as many wives as he could feed and clothe. The ranks of Muslims do have a reason to grow that robust. Mind it, sir!”

Chachar rode up to them, unable to do without the company of men that long. She sounded still offended, but fascinated as well. “Is it true that in some other country two or more men can take a single wife? They say it’s common for friends, brothers, companions, who don’t want to leave each other for family burrows…”

They rode in gallop, the wind tousled the manes of horses. Thomas didn’t listen to what Oleg told Chachar in a restrained tone. “Sir wonderer,” the knight said, his throat squeezed with emotion, “it’s no use of you trying to cheer my heart up. It’s burnt with fire! How could noble Sir Gorvel do it? He stole! He left everything: his castle, vast lands, beautiful wife and faithful vassals! What would the King say of it? And other knights?”

“That’s the power of them, sir Thomas. The power that no king ever had. Yes, Gorvel contradicted, but no long. He left all he had, went out in the night as a thief. The secret affair always comes first.”

“The secret affair… The affair of Secret Seven?”

“The affair of civilization.”

At a tilt, Thomas peered into the wonderer’s frowning face, while Oleg’s glance snatched out the blades of grass trampled down, pebbles pressed deep into ground, indistinct prints of horseshoes. Chachar was all ears but silent. The horse beneath her seemed to make an easy, sweeping float. “The Secret Seven… struggle for civilization?”

“Yes, Sir Thomas.”

Thomas fell silent for a long time, as he thought it over. He snorted, peered at the hoof prints and ended blasting out, “Damn you, sir wonderer! If they support civilization, then you… we… What are we struggling for?”

“Culture,” Oleg replied.

Chapter 10

The thief had been in too much hurry to hide his tracks. Oleg whipped his tired horse: he wanted to come upon Gorvel before dark. Thomas tried to exchange a few words with Chachar but she looked at him with eyes full of anger and resentment. She didn’t seem to be bothered much with the fate of civilization. Thomas came up with Oleg again and asked insistently, “Are culture and civilization not the same?”

“No, they aren’t, Sir Thomas. They aren’t!”

Thomas paused, rode silent for a while, frowned. When he spoke, his eyes were full of suffering. “When we climbed the walls of Jerusalem, shedding them with our blood… and the blood of enemies, it was simple! And now? I’ve always thought civilization to be at the side of good. I thought of myself as a civilizer!”

“Sir Thomas, civilization is an axe. With it, you can cut a tree down, cut some dry twigs to make a fire… or butcher a man. The higher civilization, the sharper axe you have.”

“And culture?”

“Culture is the invisible fingers that seize your arm when you brandish at a human. It is the moral law within you.”

The night was falling fast, the shadows of trees were already black as coal. Oleg drove his horse to the thicket where, he supposed, a small spring was hiding. The trail of Gorvel’s horse was very fresh: they would have come up with him if not the nightfall. However, Gorvel will also ride nowhere at night. Many hamster burrows here, his horse would break legs.

Thomas unsaddled the horses, tethered them, tied bags of oat to their snouts. Oleg made a tiny fire, hiding it from a stranger’s sight thoroughly behind thick shrubs, brought some slices of bread and meat.

Thomas asked awkwardly, “Sir wonderer… What about Christ? Does he support our Western civilization?”

Oleg dropped his eyes, feeling embarrassed by the clear, honest eyes of the young knight. “Culture, Sir Thomas. He supports culture! Satan is much more civilized, don’t you think so? He knows more than Christ, can do more things. He makes wonders at every occasion. He’s free, brave, with a broad outlook, not bound by any rules: neither inward nor outward. A vigorous guy! As against him, Christ looks simple-minded and not very clever. Just a bungler! But he’s kind, eager to give his life for us, mean and ignorant! And he gives it — for them who are no fit to hold his candle! And then there’s a rum go: people get ashamed and start climbing up to the light and goodness. The sacrifice of Christ was not vain! That’s what Satan, with all his great wits, fails to grasp. He still wonders why he, so daring and brilliant, is always defeated!”

Silence fell for a long time. They supped, horses snorted in the dark behind. Then Chachar asked, in a soft voice, “And why is he always defeated? If he’s more daring and clever?”

Oleg smirked faintly. Red lights played on his face. “It’s not enough to be clever. And daring. It’s never enough for man…”

As they went to sleep, Chachar started settling herself between the men. For a long time she complained of being cold, asked to warm her from both sides, her nose, palms, and back. Thomas coughed in embarrassment. Oleg felt that the knight’s thoughts were still far from the fire and the young woman fidgeting between them. “Civilization is not pure evil,” he comforted. “Your Lord, as far as I know your verities, has as much culture as he can, and some civilization as well. So it’s possible…”

Early in the morning, once the dawn painted the clouds red, Oleg woke Thomas and Chachar up mercilessly. At night, she had managed to wriggle, like a grass snake, into the knight’s iron embrace, but Thomas used to sleep in his armor while in field, so in the morning she struggled herself out scratched and bruised. Poor Thomas was so upset by the loss of the cup that he didn’t even notice her trying to compensate it, to make him a night of love.

Chilled horses were bursting into trot, or even a gallop, but Oleg held them, as he watched the trail. They hardly rode a mile until they found a burnt spot, its ashes still warm. Thomas grunted in annoyance, hit his forehead with a fist.

Oleg checked his bow, moved his shoulders to adjust the quiver on his back. Thomas looked askew with his blue eye, his iron hand began to tug the sheathed sword, tap on the battleaxe. Chachar tried to ride ahead. Both men shouted and hissed at her to stay put and keep behind. She got resentful, dropped behind and rode there, paying no attention to the men at all. To show her slender body once again, she would lean down from the saddle at a tilt and snatch flowers. Thomas and Oleg rode watchful, their eyes searching around. Over the distant shrubs, magpies were crying, flying in circles. The men exchanged glances, adjusted their swords.

In a hundred steps ahead, four mounted men on warhorses rode out onto their road, alerted and gloomy. All of them looked very dangerous. Two n were clad in heavy European armor, their necks protected with the nettings of mail falling on shoulders from beneath their helmets: a good protection against sabers, but not Frankish swords, heavy as hammers, or Frankish axes, massive as forges.

Other two men are definitely Saracens, lean and swarthy. Their fast Arabian horses, nervous and savage, gnaw at the bits and paw the ground, longing for a breakneck pace for which they were born and trained. The riders are clad in gleaming light armor of Damask steel, not common even for Arab nobles. Their bare sabers sparkle with blue: a distinct mark of blades made of the very best Damask steel. Their faces are haughty and still, but their posture and shoulders speak readiness for a swift fight: so swift that it will be all over before the heavy European knights have time to spur their stout warhorses.

“Oleg,” Thomas said softly. That seemed to be the first time he called the wonderer by name. “I think that’s a good day start.”

“I don’t like my road blocked,” Oleg replied sadly.

“A flimsy fence!” Thomas objected. “Just four planks in it!”

“But sturdy ones.” He looked askew at Chachar. The woman stiffened, her palms pressed to the mouth, eyes wide open in fear and bewilderment. Just a moment ago she was picking flowers, she had already thought up a pretext for presenting them to the shy knight — and now these four thunderclouds, with flashing blades of lightnings, emerged in her blue cloudless sky! What would happen to her if her protectors perish and their enemies survive?

“I’ll fight the Franks,” Thomas said arrogantly, in a tone allowing no objection. He lowered his visor with a clang of steel, hiding his face that became arrogant and angry. “And you distract Saracens. Entertain them.”

“You’re always taking the best part,” Oleg accused.

“The next time you will have it,” Thomas promised.

All the four enemies sent their horses ahead. The Saracens were motionless in their saddles, bare sabers gleaming in hands. The armored warriors exchanged looks and smirked with malice. One bellowed out, “Try to die at once, Angle! And you, pilgrim, can go to your Pagan hell. Sure, we’d rather strip three skins of you… of you alive, sure! But we’ll have all our joy on the wench. Trembling as she looks forward to us, huh! Feels real men! I swear she’ll have all and more of it before her soul is out!”

They reined up in ten steps against each other. The Arabian horses snorted and gnawed at the iron bits, while the heavy mounts of Franks could be mistaken for stone statues if not the idle waving of their tails. Thomas saw the foes meant no fast attack, so he flung the lance away and drew out his sword in a single swift move. All the four enemies had curved sabers waving in their hands. Oleg had an old habit of calling that kind of weapon a Khazarian sword.

Confused, Oleg slapped his pockets, searched his bosom on the left and on the right. Suddenly a happy smile lit his face, as if he’d caught a pernicious louse. Four enemies burst in a mocking laughter. The Saracens laughed in a restrained way, feeling their full superiority, while the Franks swayed in their saddles. Thomas frowned with shame for the wonderer, moved a bit aside, as if to show he had nothing to do with him, but the laughter of enemies only grew louder and more wicked.

Oleg pulled something out of his bosom. His hand made a sudden swift move, Thomas saw a flash. Oleg flung his hand again, turned to the angry knight. “Looks like my enemies are done,” he said with perplexity. “Please lend one of yours.”

The Saracens rocked in their saddles. The man with the knife handle in his mouth collapsed face first on the horse neck. Another jerked his hands up, gripped the hilt of Oleg’s knife stuck in his throat, in a finger above the mail collar. Blood ran out in two gushes, the air hissed in his stabbed throat. The Saracen got reeling stronger, fell down, his boot enmeshed in the stirrup. His horse recoiled in fright, burst away, dragging the corpse. Chachar, with her tender heart, galloped after it, feeling pity for the animal half-mad with fear.

Two armored warriors watched it with disbelieving eyes. Before they could stop laughing, there were only two of them facing two strong, experienced, skillful fighters. Even the pilgrim was not the simpleton he looked…

Thomas shared the blanked look with them. “Fast you are… I recall you once ate a boar before we set to dinner!”

“A brave heart wins two boars. May I take the left one?”

“Only with return!” Thomas warned, insulted.

The warriors exchanged glances, drove forward without lesser confidence than before. The first was coming at Thomas, the second, with a saber in right hand and a round shield in left, rode up to Oleg slowly. He kept shifting his light shield. A throwing knife will bounce off like a stone. Anyway. Oleg had no more knives. He unsheathed his huge sword, spoke slowly, “You can leave undamaged.”

Before the warriors could blink, Thomas yelled angrily, “Without a fight? It’s a shame on me, a Crusader!”

He galloped on the enemies, giving them no time to recover. His huge sword glittered dangerously overhead, his armor shone in the bright sun, scattering the dazzle of sparkles around. He attacked the right warrior with a thunder, wheeled round in his saddle to the left one whom he’d left to Oleg. Thomas’s violent blow crushed the shield, which the foe barely had time to raise, in two. His shield arm got numb, judging by his distorted face. Thomas put his own steel shield, large as a door, under the saber of the right enemy, turned swiftly to the left — and yelled with fury: his other enemy had a white swan feather jutting out of his left ear winsomely, while three palms of the arrow shaft topped with the bloody head stuck from his right ear.

“You lent him!” Oleg reminded briskly.

“I had a second thought!” Thomas roared. He saw a new arrow in Oleg’s hand, squealed in a strained voice, “No! Don’t you dare!..”

He clashed with the last live enemy. Both were heavy, rode mighty horses and fought in the same manner: stopped to take a breath, devoured each other with fierce eyes, lurched of own mighty blows. The crushing, thundering sounds of their duel were heard within a mile around, as if mountains were broken by thunderclaps. The foe brandished his sharp saber much faster than Thomas could do with his long sword, but Thomas’s armor proved its value: the saber would only strike sparks out of it and get indented. Cursing, Thomas slashed with his dreadful sword, seldom cutting anything but the air.

Chachar approached, stopped aside. She held the reins of the snorting Arabian horse. A different horse stood at a small distance, moved its ears nervously as it heard terrible clangs of metal on metal bur did not run away. Oleg dismounted, pulled his throwing knives off, wiped them clean.

Chachar’s face went white. She fidgeted in the saddle, begging Oleg with her eyes to help the valiant Thomas who fought the nasty shaggy villain desperately.

“No,” Oleg replied to her mute pleading. “There’s a great difference in… in our worldviews. A Crusader puts the contest first of result! So he dresses the fight into rites, dances, postures, bowing and throwing a gauntlet, while a Saracen… or the likes of his want only to win. By all means! They are ready to wallow in mud, play a mean trick, hit on the back or below the belt… If civilization prevails, this way will be common. No one will be surprised or intrude if a man down is beaten before their eyes. Thomas has no idea that he’s fighting for culture — but he is. He’d rather die than use ill practice! So I can’t interfere: it will be a great insult to him.”

Chachar watched the dreadful fight tensely, trembling and shivering at the violent blows and clang of steel. “And you? Are you Saracen or European?”

“I’m Rusich,” Oleg replied. “That means I am a bit of European, Saracen, Viking, Scyth, Cimmer, Arian, Nevr and many other nations, forgotten by everyone long ago. A Rusich is a very diverse man…”

They heard a terrible crash of iron torn apart. The enemy reeled in his saddle, a broken fragment of saber in one hand, a shield strap clenched in another. Thomas slashed crosswise. The sliced body sank, flooding the saddle with blood. Head and arm with a bit of shoulder fell down on one side, some more pieces of body — on another. The horse snorted, shifted from leg to leg but stayed in place.

Thomas turned to Oleg and Chachar, raised the visor with his blooded hand, still holding the reddened sword. His eyes searched their faces suspiciously for any hints of mockery or irony.

“Why did you take that risk?” Chachar exclaimed indignantly. “He could kill you!”

“That’s war,” Thomas replied with pride.

“But the pilgrim got rid of three at no risk at all!”

Thomas eyed Oleg from head to foot with displeasure. “He has no knightly ardor in him. No rapture of fray!”

“I have none of it,” Oleg agreed.

They gathered weapons, cleaned them, and loaded on the remounts: four added to their number. When Thomas dismounted to dig the graves, Oleg kept him. “Do you know whom to bury, whom to burn, whom to leave as they are? This mad land has all the faiths and religions mixed up.”

Thomas scratched his wet forehead in a predicament. Chachar led a horse up to him. “Please mount,” she offered gently. “They’ll be found before vultures pilfer them.”

“Found by whom?”

“Their kin,” Oleg replied instead of Chachar, with heavy sarcasm in his voice. Honest Thomas wanted to wonder what kin the hirelings could have in this land, but then he saw their faces, scolded himself silently and mounted.

The wonderer kept frowning as he watched the hoof prints. In times, his fingers touched the thread of wooden figures on a long lace. The steppe turned a hilly plain: the open space of low grass was replaced by thick shady groves, dense thorny shrubs, deep gullies. Twice they crossed wide streams. The animals fled from their way in fear: hares, a herd of wild boars, a lone kulan.

Oleg turned his horse often, dodged in loops, dismounted and palmed the ground. At last, Thomas asked with annoyance, “What’s the matter? Gorvel’s escaping! It’s time to get upon him while he thinks us stopped by his fence!”

Oleg dusted his palms off, shook his head anxiously. “We’re not the only hunters in the forest.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone is following by stealth.”

“Following Gorvel? Maybe they know he stole family jewels!”

“Following Gorvel… or us.”

Thomas gasped, his eyes widened. “Who can be that?”

“In Rus’ I’d have told you. But here… too crowded place. Too many adventurers from all around the world.”

They rode about a mile in silence until Thomas saw Oleg alert. The bow appeared in his hands, he shifted the quiver from the saddle hook to his back, so that the feathered ends of arrows were over his shoulder. Looking at the sullen wonderer, Thomas unsheathed his sword, laid it down across his saddle and rode on, ready for any unexpected thing. Chachar kept behind them, scared, feeling a danger with her female intuition. Her small palm clenched the hilt of a big dagger bravely.

Oleg reined up, said in a lifeless voice, “They were in wait. For us.”

Thomas twisted his head round but failed to get was Oleg was talking about. Chachar galloped ahead. Soon she dashed aside abruptly with a shriek. Thomas seized the sword with right hand, tugged the reins with the left one, rushed ahead with a battle cry, trampling shrubs and grass down.

In twenty steps ahead, he saw a big black spot of a recent fire. The grass around was yellow, ruthlessly trampled. On the other side of the fire, three maimed bodies lay in puddles of clotted blood, their limbs bounded tightly to the stakes driven into the ground. In place of eyes, they had bloody hollows where flies buzzed angrily, fought, copulated, laid their eggs hastily. Only one had his eyes but they seemed unnaturally big. Thomas recoiled in terror: the dead man’s eyelids had been cut away deftly, trickles of blood clotted on his untouched cheeks.

He looked back at the wonderer who gave a sullen nod to confirm Thomas’s frightful guess: the eyelids were cut away to make the tortured man unable to close eyes, to force him to see the terrible torments of his comrades. Skin was ripped off their faces, greenish sinews and tight nodules bulged on the raw red flesh. The white of teeth could be seen through the wounds on their cheeks. The three of them had their male parts chopped off and one had those parts in his mouth. Two men had their bellies slashed open and filled with earth and stones, bluish guts lying on the grass nearby.

Suddenly Thomas seemed to hear a moan. He flinched, jumped up, glanced back at Oleg in fear. The wonderer nodded again. “The last is alive. They put out his eyes and teeth, transfixed his ears, cut sinews in his limbs… but spared his life.”

“How can he live?” Thomas whispered in superstitious awe. “How can it… that… stay alive?”

“Man is a great stayer, to his misfortune. Or his good fortune.”

Thomas, still disbelieving, sheathed his sword and seized a misericord from his belt. Averting his eyes in pity and disgust, he stabbed the empty eye socket, scaring away the flies. The body twitched, uttered a scary rattle, as a blooded scrap of a tongue quivered in the mouth.

Thomas was almost weeping, pallid, his hair on its ends. He hastened to stab the rest two with the narrow blade. He didn’t find it in him to drive the misericord into untouched eyes, so he stabbed the temples. Each body gave a shiver before it was free of suffering.

Oleg watched him intently. His eyes, green as fresh grass, went black as night. “Well, how’s it? Is it easier to kill through a narrow slit of your visor? When you can’t see those you kill?”

Half-oblivious, Thomas climbed into the saddle. He sounded hoarse with suffering. “I see it, sir wonderer… That’s why our Holy Church tries to prohibit the use of bows, especially crossbows, at war. Two edicts proclaimed crossbow an instrument of Devil. With a crossbow, you can kill without a single look in enemy’s eyes!”

“Crossbow is a thing of progress! The Church is right: if no way to prevent killing completely, then it should be made difficult at least. You have to see their eyes…” He fell silent, rose on the stirrups, cast a vigilant glance around.

Thomas rode silent, suppressing the wish to look back at the maimed bodies. The wonderer cupped a hand at his forehead, strange sparkles in his shadowed green eyes. Thomas glanced at him slantwise, feeling his anxiety and strain. The wonderer was a far cry from that hermit, exhausted with fasts and self-torments, whom Thomas had once come upon and saved from mad dogs. And a farther cry from the meek slave he was in the stone pit. Meanwhile, little seemed to have changed about him: some stringy flesh gained on, but still a man of few words. He seems to live in two worlds at once. His replies are sometimes out of place. Driven by the sense of friendship, he took the search of the cup stolen by Gorvel in hands, though it brought him personally nothing but trouble. Maybe a wonderer is a sort of knight errant in that far land of Rus’? A man bound to help the troubled?

Oleg drove his horse silently to the far green hills. Thomas glanced back at the sprawled bodies. “We should have buried them… A requiem? I know few words in Latin… Laudetur Jesus Christos…”

“Amen,” Oleg finished. “You keep forgetting that your Christian faith has not conquered all the world yet! Those might have been fire worshippers.”

They felt a stinky wind from great wings overhead. Those were imperial eagles, a whole flight of them, floating in their wait for people to leave. Chachar was shivering with fright and ended riding far ahead to wait for the men there.

Thomas tied up the captured horses with a single rope, shifted the load among them once more. Scared Chachar was peering at every move within the bushes, listening to the sounds of live steppes. A dismal cry of jackal reached their ears from far away. It was answered by a dreary scream, full of depression and helpless malice, from the other end of the valley.

Oleg listened, then grumbled, “Fools… Which spearmen?”

“What are you talking about?” Thomas wondered.

“A fool asked whether one had seen two Franks who killed four spearmen. Another fool replied he hadn’t even seen their tracks.”

Thomas glanced at the wonderer with badly concealed fear. “That’s the power of sanctity… Of the cave erudition, I mean! Once I’ve met a monk who could swear in twelve languages, and now… er… a man who knows the tongue of jackals!”

“Which jackals? Those were villains calling to each other.”

The wonderer looked and sounded so dull that Thomas repeated in astonishment, “Vil… lains?”

“Yes, just them. Searching for us.”

Chachar gazed at the men with hope, so Thomas squared his shoulders and tapped the sword hilt, proud and arrogant. “Let them find us.”

Chapter 11

The air grew scorching, streaming like sand. As Thomas rode, his armor all but melted. Looking at the half-naked wonderer, the knight stripped it off, but that brought only little relief.

In the torrid heat, it were their horses who suffered most, so Thomas recalled what he knew of the ways of local nomads and offered, “We may ride at night! The road is even, it’s neither forest nor mountains. If you even ride with eyes closed, you won’t bump into a tree. The nights are bright, the moon is full. It’s as large as half the sky! I thought the moon was same in Britain and here but now I see it isn’t. Even stars here are different: bigger and brighter!”

Oleg did not argue, and Chachar screamed with delight. She was suffering not the heat only: dripping with sweat, as everyone was, she would sniff herself over with revulsion, rush ahead of men to every stream they encountered, wash her clothes at every occasion, stuffed her belt with bunches of grass meant to overcome, or at least absorb, the odors of steamed body.

Oleg smirked and said nothing.

In the dead of the night, he put the fire out and woke both companions ruthlessly. “You wanted it!” They got up, cursing the hard-hearted pilgrim, saddled, and rode out into the chill of the night. A huge dark dome with dense placers of stars was over their heads.

The big moon shone like a lantern of oilpaper. They could see each of the smallest pebbles and grass blades on the ground. Thomas was surprised to see they were not the first to hit upon it: lizards darted about the night steppes, turtles walked pompously and nibbled the grass. A column of big black ants crossed the way. Carefully, taking the advantage of chill, they were carrying tender pupae, as white as milk: their children wrapped in their finest silks. The scorching sun would definitely have burnt their unprotected bodies.

Thomas reined up to let them pass. Oleg watched him with surprise, as if he saw the knight for the first time. In his gleaming armor, Thomas looked like a giant ant, while the ants looked like tiny knights.

“You’ll get tired waiting,” Oleg said softly. “They’ll be marching to their Jerusalem all the night long.”

Thomas made his horse back and jump in such a way as if the two of them were a whole. One hoof hit the ground close to the black column but the small knights kept their formation.

They rode in a slow pace to save the strength of horses. In the ghostly moonlight, the lands around seemed even more wild. The remnants of ancient walls, ruins of temples, half-buried canals, thick olive groves where villains could nestle… The country is rich but garrisoned only in castles and cities with solid walls, while the roads are lorded by marauders and brigands: those sprung out in countless numbers after the bloody and strange war when mounted knights had come from the cold west, clad in their indestructible steel, swept the light Arab hosts away, started to raise thick-walled castles and spread the Christian faith around with fire and sword…

The Franks were not for making slaves and plundering: at least, they were not that blatant in it as all the conquerors before. They swore having come only to rescue the Holy Sepulcher, but once the war ended, the victorious knightly hosts came apart. Some soldiers left for their northern homelands, others became lucky brigands and marauders in this rich country, and all the ancient realm became a boiling pot of noble knights, scholar monks, highborn Saracens, assassins, astrologers, and half-savage princelings — almost any sort of man could be found here. The blossoming valleys were swept over by waves of nomads never seen there before, who performed rites so cruel and repulsive that the sight of them made even the hardiest northern warriors blanch. As the castles and cities were ruled by Franks, while Saracens held the numerous villages, the conquerors rushed to raise high walls, strengthen their gates, make grain houses and cellars big enough to endure a sack.

Horses mended their pace, urged by the chill of the night, but did not break into trot. Following Oleg’s example, Thomas listened for a danger. He heard wolves and jackals calling to each other. An eagle-owl flew past them silently, its dark shadow screened the stars for a moment. Bats darted by frequently, the flaps of their leathery wings silent the same, their prominent eyes a frightful blaze of red coals, their sharp white teeth shimmering like sugar.

The three of them descended slowly from a gently sloping hill into a flat valley almost intact by ravines. Thomas was the first to notice a sparkle ahead and alert. They rode on for a long time, peering there tensely, stopping to listen, until the sparkle turned a reddish spot, quivering and shape-shifting.

They drove straight to the fire. It vanished in times, hidden by trees. Finally, they came to a low steep stone wall shielding a bonfire. Six sullen men were warming themselves around it: filthy and ragged, their faces angry and irritated. Two men leaned their backs on the stone, sharpening their curved swords on the rough boulders. Two others lay beneath motley blankets, the rest raked coals and spoke in hushed voices.

One of the men heard a clatter of hooves and cried idly, “Tagran? You?”

Silently, Thomas and the wonderer rode into the lit circle, Chachar at their heels. The six villains were up at once. One lingered a bit and was kicked. Thomas found himself surrounded by gleaming spearheads. Oleg dismounted unhurriedly, Thomas followed his suit. They unsaddled and tethered their horses, tied the bags of oat.

Six villains stood around, looking at each other. One stepped back, vanished in the dark. He must have gone to check for the crossbow bolts pointed at the gang, for strong lads with strong bows who had surrounded.

Finally, a black-bearded, abruptly-moving villain demanded, “Who are you? Why came?”

Chachar was scared. Thomas helped her to dismount, while Oleg sat down by the fire, squirmed to make himself comfortable. “Don’t you know?” he said derisively. “Who left those three fools in ambush then?”

The villains exchanged glances. “Did you kill them?” the black-bearded man asked harshly.

Thomas seated Chachar near the wonderer. She cuddled up to him with her trembling shoulder, quiet as a cornered mouse. “Definitely we would have killed them!” Thomas replied haughtily.

The villains were shifting their feet. Two sharp spearheads all but touched the wonderer’s neck, three more were pressed on Thomas’s breast.

Oleg glanced back. “You may sit down,” he said with annoyance.

The villains exchanged glances again. The Black Beard said in an abrupt, angry voice, “We can stand. And you tell us quickly and bluntly: what happened to our three friends who… dropped behind?”

Thomas and Oleg looked at each another. The spears pointed at them were held by strong hands but at that moment the spearheads started quivering.

“They will not come ahorse,” Thomas said solemnly, then had a second thought and added, “Never.”

“Neither on foot,” Oleg told them reluctantly.

“And they won’t crawl on their fours,” Chachar squealed, her voice broken with desperate braveness. “Nor on their bellies!”

The Black Beard jerked his shoulder. They heard a quiver in his malicious voice. “You couldn’t have seen them! They skilled hunters. Grab a saiga by horns before it smells them! They lied in good wait, you just couldn’t have…”

“Their wait ended before we came,” Thomas replied proudly.

Oleg, in the habit of hermits and preachers to explain and make everyone see it, spoke in a humble voice, “Are jackals never attacked by wolves? Before we found your friends, they had met Hazars. It’s a savage tribe, if you know: Khazars who went wild. A hundred years ago, Prince Svyatoslav wiped the great Khazar Kaganat off the face of earth. The few Khazars who survived were disseminated among Pechenegs and Polovtsians. But the most savage gang is still roaming about. They skin everyone they capture, slash bellies open to see a man crawling around for a long time, dragging his guts behind, with his belly stuffed with stones…”[11]

The even line of spears around them broke. Thomas heard a heavy breath overhead, but did not look there. He was warming his chilled palms by the fire, its dry heat make him squint with pleasure. At last, he heard a constrained voice nearby. “Can they… get on our tracks?” Other villains started to breath faster at once. Thomas grasped that the speaker had articulated what everyone was trembling about. He saw Oleg smirking at the silly question and made a wider smirk himself. Villains deserve nothing but contempt.

Spears began to vanish from sight. The wonderer tossed some twigs into the fire, paying no heed to the villains who argued just over his head. They hissed at each other, all but spitting, but habitual malice in their voices was replaced by terror.

“But there are Frank garrisons!” a man screamed.

Oleg shook his head silently. Thomas replied competently, “Franks?.. Invincible in the battle of cavalries, but not able to cope with light Saracen parties. They fall upon suddenly and rob and scatter at once, then gather again at a nook. They leave horses unshod to enable a faster gallop. And Khazars… or Hazars… that’s the first time I hear of them but if they are wild nomads, the heavy Frankish cavalry is no protection. I’m a knight myself. I shall kill a hundred of them in attack but shan’t catch up even a single one!”

The villains were coming to the fire one by one. The sharp spears were now pointed at the sky. “Hazars will take you, as they took your friends,” Oleg said in a peaceful voice. “Alive, for sure! Ill-fated, they wreak their anger on captives. I’d rather not recall what I saw there!”

They heard a moan in the dark. A different villain held his breath as if he were punched in the gut. As Oleg raked the coals with a twig, he felt the very air impregnated with fear. The pale long faces with goggled eyes were pitiful and nasty to look at.

The Black Beard spoke abruptly the same, but his voice quavered. “We’ll have to ride in an arc to find refuge in the nearest fortress. It’s just two days ride!”

“They’ll attack you at once. From behind.”

“What if we find a shelter? We have two bows and lots of arrows. In a cave with a narrow entrance, we can hold for long!”

“…with them sitting in sight, gobbling, drinking, and dancing for you to see. You’ll run out of your food soon, and sooner — of your water. And see them pouring water on the ground or each another. And when they get you, half-dead with thirst, they won’t let you die soon. Or easy.”

“We’ll be sacrificed to their gods?” the Black Beard asked in a droopy voice.

“Their God,” Oleg corrected. “Once they put their gods aside for a foreign one. The only one. Khan Obadiah adopted the new faith in the eight hundred and fifth. That was the beginning of the collapse of Kaganat. Khazars were punished by their old gods for apostasy and not protected by the new one. That new god had no shape, his appearance always hidden, so he was called hideous. Judging by his behests, that hideous god was brutal and blood-thirsty. We, the good sir and I, don’t mind whether you live or die. You are robbers yourself, so get paid by your own coin. I’d never object to Hazars giving you a good Christian death, though I’m no Christian. But we, with good sire and highborn lady… Chachar, don’t fell, that’s a fire!.. we are against the savage torments that await you. That’s why we’ll give you a chance to save your bacons.”

“What must we do?” a villain asked in a desperate voice. “What to do?”

“Saddle your horses and leave. Now. They are just about to find this fire. And then… Old Hazars would rather bring you to their camp, to take you with their bare hands for all the tribe to see. They are skillful in it… But the young daredevils can attack at once!”

The villains jumped up and rushed about, snatching their strewn things, knocking each other down. Oleg was looking thoughtfully in the dancing flames. Thomas winced with contempt: he could forgive cowardice to unarmed farmers but not to men who chose a risky life at will! Lions among sheep!

While the villains saddled and tightened girths, Thomas and Oleg took the bags of oats from their horses, untethered them. Chachar fidgeted in the saddle, peering into the dark, her eyes round with fright, but she kept silence, only glanced back at Thomas and Oleg in times.

They numbered nine when rode out of the valley: the knight and the pilgrim first, Chachar between them, and scared villains behind, shuddering and bowing at every sudden sound — a flap of wings or a crunch of brushwood.

Tired horses dragged along reluctantly. They rode in silence, even Thomas and Chachar, hearing only the gentle clatter of hooves and soft leather creaks of saddles. The moon crept behind a translucent cloud, wandered inside the gigantic air creature for a long time, in search of an exit — and found it under the shaggy tail, dropped out, shone brighter, cleaning itself, but was swallowed by a darker cloud at once. That was how they rode in the night until Oleg pointed at the fading stars for Thomas. The knight replied with a majestic bow of his iron head.

Oleg was the first to dismount, unsaddle, and water his horse from a skin carried by a remount. Oleg’s mount, worn out by the journey, almost drained it. Oleg took him to a glade with rich tall grass. The villains, seeing the knight and the pilgrim that confident, also unsaddled their horses and let them onto the glade.

Once Oleg made a fire, villains collapsed on the bare ground and fell asleep. Thomas wrinkled his nose in disgust: he despised any creatures so fast to pass from malice to absolute trust. All of them can easily be slaughtered now. Just imagine their belief in knight’s word! Once they heard a promise to help them escape Hazars, they rejoiced like children.

Though villains believed them while awake, they cried in their sleep, twitched anxiously, woke with goggled eyes and big beads of sweat on their faces. Once they made sure of being not captured by Hazars yet, they fell back like dead, snorted, twitched again, gritted their teeth.

Oleg observed the light stripe of the skyline closely. As the sky began to turn blue, the eastern edge of the earth got red, as if it were shed with blood.

Thomas walked around the fire, his bare sword gleaming, but then he got tired of it, sat down on a stump aside, took the whetstone out of his saddle bag. As villains heard the horrible swish of metal in their sleep, they flinched and groaned. Thomas whetted the blade of his huge sword painstakingly, touched it with his nail to check for razor-sharpness. The whetstone in his hand screeched again, grits sprinkled over the sleeping Black Beard’s face. The brigand writhed, cramped, howled in terror, but he was too tired to wake up.

Oleg sniffed the air, kicked the Black Beard awake mercilessly. “You are the leader? Carry the fire to that gully. And make it as small as you can.”

The Black Beard went pale. “They can attack now?” he asked in a constrained voice.

“A bit later.”

“We’ll carry it,” the Black Beard promised hastily. His suspicious eyes followed Thomas who rose and went to his stallion. “Where’s the knight going?”

“We shall ride ahead.”

The Black Beard pushed his gang awake. They grabbed their arms and surrounded Oleg and Thomas hastily. “You won’t leave without us!” the leader claimed fiercely.

“We pursue a man,” Oleg told them harshly. “It’s very important for us. And you… make your camp. And don’t hide under those trees.”

The Black Beard glanced back. “Can they creep up from there?” he asked suspiciously.

“Gods often throw lightnings in trees,” Oleg explained coldly. “Especially in a plain land. A thunderstorm is coming!”

The six villains shifted their gazes between him and the clear, cloudless sky. Aside, Thomas saddled the second horse but got thoughtful about the third one, lingered and hesitated. Chachar is a woman. But does it befit a noble knight to saddle a horse for a common men, a Pagan? Friendship shan’t mix with rules of etiquette. Even kings never step out of those…

“You won’t leave alone,” the Black Beard snapped. “I don’t know what that knight took from you but it must be valuable! Or why would you three pursue him when land invaded by Hazars? We didn’t know of those at least!”

Thomas pulled his gauntlets on, took the huge sword he’d sharpened elaborately. The ground trembled of his heavy steps. His visor was down, face hidden behind the iron grate, only his blue eyes looked through the slit, dooming and merciless. They could read in his cold eyes that he was about to show the softhearted pilgrim how a man should talk to villains.

Oleg raised his palm, holding the knight back, spoke gently, “It’s no treasure. The lord of the castle in south from here stole from our knight — that’s him and that’s his sword — a nail of Christ, their god… or prophet, other people say. And for you, nonbelievers, it’s a plain nail. You won’t get a single silver coin for it. Even in the countries where Christ is worshipped you won’t, as you can’t prove it’s truly his nail, not some fake thing. It has value only for Sir Thomas… See? The lord insulted the good sire by stealing the nail. It’s a matter of honor, not wealth!”

The villains pulled long mugs slowly. Malice and suspect were darting in their eyes, but the pilgrim’s sad face looked absolutely honest. The woman took a dagger, looked defiantly. Suddenly. Oleg said, “Would you like us to give an inviolable oath? We pursue the runaway knight for no treasure but justice and vengeance. When we kill him, we’ll take nothing but a bag of oat, a wineskin, and a copper cup to make a couple of good gulps from it!”

Thomas shifted the sword to his left hand, raised his right one to the sky. “I swear it on Holy Relics! I swear it by Christ!” he thundered through the visor.

The villains lowered their weapons impotently, exchanged spiteful glances. Thomas mounted heavily, took his lance, a red banner trembling under its wide steel blade, like a flame. Oleg gave a brigand whistle, his horse came running, obedient, shaking the bag on his snout as he galloped, reaching for the last mouthful of oat.

The Black Beard remembered he was a leader and asked anxiously, “What must we do? We’re no Saracens but strangers here.”

“Always post sentries, two of yours. Keep your horses close. Watch them. They’ll be the first to smell the horses of others. Should they snort, move their ears, knock with a hoof or neigh… But if Hazars get you, it is best for you to die fast. To take own lives. We are going to be back by night.”

“What if you don’t come?” the Black Beard called after him in a shaky voice.

“Go north,” Oleg replied. “Hills turn mountains there — a good hide. Hide your tracks if you can. The mountains are your rescue: they have more caves than cheese has holes. Look around while you go. There are caravan roads, the famous route from Vikings to Greeks ends here. Many merchants and caravans passing, many brigands around — your own sort — many marauders, Ottoman riders, but beware of the Hazars most. That’s all.”

In the bright blue sky, straight above the skyline, a cloud sprung up and started to grow rapidly. Thomas nodded at it. “That’s the storm!” he flung out with scorn. “The rain will wash our tracks off, but sir wonderer and I… we’ll find you.”

The knight’s destrier was prancing, gnawing at the bit. While he was not to show his tiredness, the pilgrim’s sly horse pretended to be dying. He sagged his back so that his belly all but touched the ground, breathed with death rattles, almost coughed. Oleg poked the stallion’s belly, he breathed out noisily. Oleg hastened to tighten the girth. The horse looked askew with an innocent eye. He didn’t seem to be sorry for his failure, as if he made very little effort to do it.

Oleg mounted and they galloped, heading the strengthening wind. The cloud was spreading out and concentrating. Once as white and curly as a sheep, it went dingy grey, then coal-black, heavy, flashing with brief evil lightnings. The heavy menacing storm cloud moved onto them like an avalanche: thundering, spark-emitting, crushing down the blue of the sky and getting bigger at every moment. Its dark belly was illumed continually by flashes of white light.

The road went down, between rocky walls. The wind grew stronger and howled, squeezing through the narrow canyon. Then the walls came apart and became lower but the path kept winding. Oleg glanced at the dark sky, urged his horse on. The rain is about to pour down and the tracks of Gorvel’s horse are fresh. If they hadn’t lingered with villains, they could come upon him at this very spot!

Horses trotted along a tall sheer wall when Thomas cried in excitement, “I see fire!”

In three or four hundred steps ahead, a faint smoke was rising from a slope. They could not see the fire: it was hidden artfully behind rocks. Thomas vaulted off and craned his neck, peering there. Oleg hold his horse in. He felt anxious but could not detect the threat.

Thomas threw the rope hastily round the stallion’s forelegs. “You go with me?” he called to Oleg.

Oleg dismounted slowly, shifted the bow from the saddle to his shoulder. Thomas adjusted his sword baldric and started up the steep slope. In his gleaming armor, he looked like a metal statue. Stones cracked under his iron body, burst, crumbled. Oleg barely had time to dodge boulders falling from under the knight’s feet.

They could see the fire burning out, its burnt crimson coals, when there was a thunder of stones above. Oleg grasped it at once, bellowed for Thomas to look out and jumped away, under the shelter of a stone ledge.

A colossal boulder was rolling down. On the go, it bounced and kicked down two more huge stones. The three of them brought down a whole rockslide.

Crawling on his fours, Thomas tossed his head, glanced at Oleg, then looked up again, advanced his hands involuntarily. The rockslide was coming down at him. Stones bounced, fell down with force, knocking down another mossy boulders.

Cursing, Thomas dashed aside. Oleg felt a hit on shoulder, curled up under the ledge. Rocks crashed overhead, bouncing down from it. The dust rose. Big boulders flew above and by but pebbles, grits, clods of earth, and broken stone fragments rained down his back and head.

When the thundering sounds descended, Oleg straightened up, throwing a layer of earth and pebbles off his back. The rockslide had rushed by, the stones scattered within scores of steps at the mountain foot. Horses had run aside, terrified by the crash.

The earth was bare where the rockslide had passed. Thomas was seen nowhere. Cold with fear, Oleg dragged his feet down the slope. His right arm hung loose, numb of the strike by stone. The ground was sagging beneath his feet, bare and friable.

After he made two score steps down, he saw a scatter of stones, a flash of metal beneath them. He hurried down there, flung some rocks aside. A crumpled, filthy iron shoulder turned out to be hidden beneath. The cleft was filled with stones and the knight had been thrown there too, the mass of rocks rolled over and trampled his metal body deeper into the crack.

Oleg hurled the boulders away, his back prickling, right arm still aching and unable to move. He released the knight’s helmet, then turned Thomas on his back, tugged his visor but the crumpled grate stalled. Scraping his fingers and making an awful grind, Oleg raised the visor — and recoiled. The knight’s face was pallid, its right side covered with red blood, his lips foaming with bloody saliva. “Sir Thomas,” Oleg called insistently. “Sir Thomas!”

Thomas’s eyelids were closed tightly, the eyeballs beneath them motionless as if made of wax. Oleg rolled away the last rocks angrily. The knight’s armor, once gleaming, was dark and dented. However hard Oleg tried to pull Thomas out of the iron shell, he failed to do it with his one hand: no clasp wished to be undone. He felt the first shiver down his right arm, the fingers on it started to move again.

He undid the flack, splashed the water from it on the knight’s pallid face. Thomas’s eyelids fluttered, rose slowly. He stared into the space, his smashed lips moved. Oleg heard a rattle. “Sir wonderer… Are we still in this world?”

“It’s the only world where we can be together. Can you get up?”

Thomas strained but his body remained as motionless as the cleft he lay in. “My road ends here,” he whispered in a dull voice.

Oleg heard a rustle above followed by heavy hasty steps. It was Gorvel hurrying down to them, hopping on stones. He was clad in armor: not full armor, as the one Thomas had on, but a light mail riveted with steel plates on most vulnerable places. The mail reached his knees. He wore light boots and a gleaming Saracen helmet topped with a feather, a green cloth winded in rows around its base. Gorvel had a curved dagger on his belt and a curved heavy sword, a strange mixture of a knightly sword and a saber, in hand. “You’ve had a long run after me!” he cried. “But I’m no deer to flee a hunter! And even a deer can hit with antlers, can’t he?”

Oleg stood up, his fingers seized the knife handle. No time to shoot. Gorvel in three steps.

The red-bearded knight smirked at him. “Why in left hand?”

“I’m a left-hander,” Oleg replied. Gorvel looked him over and smirked maliciously.

“…with a scabbard on your right? You are both-hander, a fool can see it. But now you have one hand and a knife whilst I have two and a sword. See it? You can return to your horses. Ride away and never look back.”

Oleg bent down a little, the knife pointed at himself, in Scythian way. His grass-green eyes were fixed on Gorvel’s sullen, angry face. “I’ll stay with him.”

Gorvel muttered a curse, made a small step ahead, his sword started whirling in semicircles. Oleg recoiled swiftly to the right, then moved left, checking his bruised body.

Gorvel’s eyes widened. He stopped and grumbled, “I hate knives… Hey, pilgrim! You are a very dark horse. Why do you care of this knight? I have scores to settle with him.”

“I rode with him.”

“And I was at war with him!”

Thomas moved his lips. Oleg heard a faint whisper. “Sir wonderer… Leave. It’s my fault, my mistake!.. Leave…”

“We’ll win more wars,” Oleg comforted Thomas, keeping his eyes on Gorvel. “The Gate of Heaven is still closed to us!”

“Leave… Then… if you like… come back and kill… Holy vengeance…”

Gorvel heard him and nodded. “Quite so! Come back later and…”

“I’d rather kill you now,” Oleg objected. He prepared to throw a knife, swinging on his half-bent knees, looking for Gorvel’s vulnerable places.

The red-bearded knight glanced back angrily. His face was unhappy, as if he were bound to do what he hated. “I hate knives… Especially throwing ones. But I’m not afraid of them!”

He stepped forward, raising his sword. His eyes met Oleg’s. Two steps remained between them. Gorvel bared his teeth, went pale, as he drove himself into rage. His forehead bulged with sinews, his sword became a part of his glittering steel body.

Chapter 12

Suddenly they heard a clatter of hooves below. Five riders galloped, raising dust, to the foot of the hill, surrounded the horses of Oleg and Thomas. Two of them dismounted at once, untethered horses, grabbed the reins. Gorvel saw it over Oleg’s head, bellowed in fury, “Blizzard! They stole my Blizzard!”

Oleg glanced back, rocked aside at once, in case of Gorvel taking the chance to hit. At a glance, Oleg saw among the riders a horse with ornate harnesses, empty saddle and a big swollen bag behind it. Gorvel watched the strangers in fury, making no attempt to attack Oleg. The burglars rode slim short-legged horses, so the stallions of Franks stood out by their might and height.

“The cup in your bag?” Oleg asked.

“I’m not the one to carry it on my back!” Gorvel snapped.

“Sir Thomas was.”

“Did it help him?”

“You’d better not leave it in the bag!”

“There’s no use crying over spilt milk.”

The strangers who had taken their horses started to remove and untie saddle bags. Two of the men laughed, as they pointed at the furious knight on the mountain. Gorvel cursed, started coming to Oleg, looking past him. Oleg stepped aside. Gorvel ran down faster, shouting threats. The sword in his hand scattered orange lights.

Oleg bent over Thomas, put his palm on the knight’s pale sweaty forehead. “Take heart, Sir Thomas. Your life is in your hands.”

“In the hands of Holy Virgin,” Thomas reproached in whisper.

“In yours,” Oleg objected angrily. “Don’t you see? Sir God refused to take your knightly soul that soon. You haven’t delivered the Holy Grail, so don’t show white feather. Heading for the paradise, I mean. Get up. It’s not the time for eternal rest yet.”

Thomas stirred with a groan. To his own great surprise, he managed to sit up, though contorted with acute pain. “The mountain chewed me up and spat out…”

“Yeah, but it came to grief over your armor! The first time I see the use of it.” Thomas made a faint but proud smile. Oleg decided not to say that, despite the heavy armor had saved the knight’s life, without it he would have dodged on time.

They heard a shout of fury, clang of steel below. At the foot of the hill, Gorvel backed, beating off two marauders. The third one lay in a puddle of blood. Gorvel lunged, the second marauder fell down with his head slashed in two, but the next moment they heard a clatter of hooves, as several more riders, apparently marauders from the same gang, rushed out from the other side of the hill, screamed, unsheathed their sabers, and galloped on Gorvel.

Gorvel wheeled round, ran up the slope. Three marauders dismounted and rushed after him, falling on the steep, clinging at the rocks. Despite his armor. Gorvel was a fast climber. Only once had the fastest of burglars come upon him, but Gorvel heard his rattling breath, dropped at once, his sword swished low above the ground. The marauder uttered a dreadful scream: the curved blade slashed his knees.

Panting, clutching at stones and grass, Gorvel climbed up, straight to where Thomas was sitting. Oleg raised his knife and, once Gorvel was in three steps, flung it. Gorvel had no time to dodge, his eyes widened in mortal fear — but the knife swished by, almost having cut his ear off. Gorvel heard a hoarse cry behind, wheeled round, raising his sword, but the marauder who had come upon him was sinking down, his teeth bared in a silent cry, the knife hilt in his throat. Gorvel cast a sullen look at the wonderer, hesitated for a moment, tugged the knife out and hurled back to Oleg. “Thank you. I didn’t expect.”

Oleg caught the knife in the air, shoved into the cover. “We’re in the same boat so far,” he said.

Thomas winced, as if he had a pang. “I’ve always revered pilgrims for their wisdom!” Gorvel said hastily. He turned his back to Oleg as a sign of trust. Oleg drew his bow quickly, took an arrow with fingertips. The marauders were slow climbers, stumbling and falling. Oleg allowed them three score steps before he shot four men. The rest collapsed on the rocks, cursing.

“Excellent shots!” Gorvel admired. “I’ve always advocated equipping out army with bows. The civilization is to replace the dated rules of morality.”

“A dishonorable weapon!” Thomas objected. He waited for a pang to pass and forced out, “A coward can kill a brave man, a weak one can kill a strong one. The culture is against…”

Gorvel smirked but said nothing, as he glowered at the knight. Thomas started getting up. Oleg handed the sword to him. The knight leaned on its cruciform handle, rose to his feet, reeling. One of the villains looked out, intending to run into another shelter. Oleg’s bow string clicked at once. The white feather bloomed on the marauder’s chest on the left, he waved his hands, fell on his back, rolled down.

Gorvel clicked his tongue. “Splendid! The main thing is to damage the enemy. Honest or dishonest… that will be forgotten. Winner is always right. There are no foul ways while at war. All is good that brings victory. It’s the law of civilization!”

Thomas blushed, straightened up with great effort but Oleg stopped him with his palm raised. “Civilization against culture — that’s a long battle. Our great-grandchildren will see the end of it. And we have simpler matters to settle. How much water we have?”

“Two water skins of mine,” Gorvel said. “On my horse.”

Thomas curled his lip. “A pie in the sky is closer!”

They heard a cry from behind the rocks where the marauders were hiding from arrows, saw one of the villains waving a white kerchief. Oleg raised his hand to show he had no weapon in it, and the man shouted, “Hey you, noble knights! We know your habit to carry gold and jewels in your belts. Leave your arms, armor, and clothes — and you can go away. We are not Hazars. We don’t need your lives. Only your gold.”

Thomas said nothing, his loathing look all but burning holes in Gorvel’s armor. Gorvel stirred nervously, shooting glances at Thomas, the wonderer, and marauders. “How can we see,” Oleg cried loudly, “that it sufficed?”

“Sir wonderer, how can you?!” Thomas whispered indignantly.

“A stratagem, you fool!” Gorvel interrupted bluntly. “Go on, sir… what’s your name. Keep haggling!”

“You won’t stand up to our attack!” the marauder shouted. “There are twelve of us… eleven. All former soldiers of Crusade!”

“Twelve or eleven?” Oleg cried back.

“Eleven,” the marauder snapped. “We’re no lousy footpads took knives for the first time and went onto road! We fought way across Cilicia and Palestine. We took Saracen cities by storm!”

“We need to have a counsel,” Oleg replied. The marauder subsided behind the rocks. Oleg turned to Thomas and Gorvel. “What will we do?”

“Attack them,” Thomas said with dignity, in a husky manly voice. “Throw them down to the foot and shake their souls out!”

“A fitting answer!” Oleg said with admiration. “Noble and brilliant! Knighthood in all its beauty. Now I’d like to hear something different. Sir Gorvel?”

Gorvel combed his fire-red beard with his five thoughtfully, glanced back at the scatter of stones, the helmets of marauders shimmering behind it. “Only two good passages lead into this cleft. I can defend any of them against any host: they can only come by one or two. And you close another passage.”

“Less spectacular but more practical,” Oleg agreed. “But it’s noon, and all they need is to wait for the night come. They know where we are. In the dark, they will climb higher and shower us with darts and stones.”

They drank the remnants of water from Oleg’s flack. Gorvel refused proudly, though he suffered not lesser thirst than Thomas. Oleg did not insist, poured the last drops into the pale knight’s mouth. Thomas tried to take the upper part of his armor off. Oleg helped him with it, whistled at the sight of solid bruises. Thomas moaned when Oleg’s huge hands started to set his joints right, to knead his body, making the blood flow in it again. Big beads of sweat ran down the poor Angle’s face, his eyes rolled up creepily.

At last Oleg let him off. Pale as death, Thomas rose up to his feet, crouched to try his muscle. “Sir wonderer,” he said in a constrained voice, “you are the best healer that ever came into this world! My bones are burnt, as if I were in Hell that awaits for mean Sir Gorvel, but my sinful body obeys! My hand keeps the sword.”

Gorvel was sitting aside, scowling from under his bushy eyebrows. His eyes flashed with a strange expression, which Oleg would call a compassion. “Timely. You’ll need it soon,” Gorvel told Thomas in a flat voice.

“We’ll grind the marauders into dust,” Thomas promised. “And then I’ll kill you, a foul thief who disgraced the knighthood!” Gorvel gave him an ironical bow but kept his sword in hand.

The sun was sinking, the marauders peeped out from behind the rocks. Two of them sharpened their swords demonstratively, talking to each other. Only one villain remained at the foot, not to mention two wounded men. The rest were climbing up unhurriedly to attack in the dark.

Thomas snuffled angrily, piercing Gorvel with fiery looks. His fingers went white, as he gripped the sword hilt. Gorvel alerted, tucked his legs under him, ready to jump up at any time.

Oleg raised his hand and spoke slowly, “Perhaps we’ll all die soon. A good moment for truth, isn’t it? Sir Gorvel, you have startled everyone, I would say. The king made a gift to you: vast lands in your use forever, lots of villages and hamlets with their small folk. Your castle, faithful vassals, your beautiful wife who was about to bring your heir… Your abandoned all of it suddenly! And became an outlaw. You ran away from your own castle. Why? What for?” Gorvel replied with a gloomy smirk, silent and mysterious. “What rank?” Oleg asked suddenly.

Gorvel shot a glance at him and said nothing. Oleg drew a figure of eight upside down in the air. Gorvel’s eyes widened. Oleg drew another sign, his eyes fixed on Gorvel’s face. The knight twitched, hardened his sword grip. Oleg drew a line and encircled it. Gorvel went pale and jumped up. “That… That’s impossible!”

Thomas shifted his startled gaze from the red-bearded knight to the wonderer.

Oleg smiled malevolently. “Oh, I see. You are just an apprentice… But for the Holy Grail, they would have raised you to a master? Hum. They could move you straight into…” He stopped in the middle of a sentence, drew a complicated symbol.

“Who are you?” Gorvel asked in a stunned whisper. “How do you know our secret signs?”

Oleg drew a new symbol. “And this?” he asked quickly.

Gorvel’s voice gave a quaver. “A symbol of upper ranks. I’m not allowed… Are you a Grand Master?”

Oleg shook his head slowly. “I could have deceived you. As I know the rites and secret symbols, I could make you obey blindly… Sir Thomas, this man is a member of the secret society that has more power than any king or emperor. It has the most loyal servants: the ones who serve not their king or seignior, not any man but Idea!”

“Which?”

“The idea of progress. The idea of civilization.”

Gorvel scowled. His face expressed distrust, doubt, even fear, as if he were thinking the wonderer to play some game, about to reveal himself and give a sign that would make him, Sir Gorvel, obey implicitly. And he will obey, as he obeyed the night rider who showed a secret symbol and ordered to leave all the wealth acquired by hard work, to steal the cup and carry it, as fast as he can, to the indicated place. “Is it a wrong idea?” Gorvel asked in a feeling voice.

“Once Diogenes was asked: why did he praise the verse of a bad poet for all to hear. And the philosopher answered: for he was writing verse instead of robbing! In our world, every idea is better than robbery. Any idea implies order, hierarchy of values, obedience to no men but law. When an Eastern despot conquers dozens of neighbor kingdoms with sword and fire and unites them into a large empire, it is the lesser evil, ‘cause it puts an end to bloody wars between those kingdoms and roads are cleaned from villains and merchants are free to carry their goods and caravan ways turn safe and peaceful villagers are spared of sudden forays… But despotism is evil. The barbarian kingdoms of Europe, with all their roughness, give people more freedom, give feelings of pride and dignity. A better thing, as I’ve said, is to serve no king, even the noblest one, but a noble Idea… But, Sir Thomas, you have seen that the idea of civilization is only good against extreme savagery!”

Gorvel watched him warily and silently. At last, he asked uncertainly, “What is above civilization?”

“Culture,” Oleg replied — and realized he’d lost the battle for Gorvel’s soul. The face of red-bearded knight changed at once: his watchfulness replaced by a deep and blunt contempt. His shoulders relaxed, he glanced back to where the marauders were gathering behind a stone ridge, ready for the final attack.

Thomas, who was watching the wonderer with confusion, alerted at once, jumped up and moaned: he’d forgotten of his body beaten by rocks. Below, in the dusky valley, some riders were galloping from far away. Their horses rushed in wild fear, dripping with lather, the riders clung to their manes with no look back. In half a mile behind them, there was a vague mass approaching. In the dusk, it took Oleg some time to discern lots of galloping horses, their riders half-naked and beastlike, with flying black hair.

Gorvel and Thomas peered there anxiously, as they heard a menacing clatter of many unshod hooves. Marauders turned to the valley. Thomas found his voice at last. “Sir wonderer… Those are Khazars? Or Hazars, I mean?”

Not bothering to reply, Oleg unsheathed his sword and raised overhead. The blade glared in the setting sun, poured bright lights into the dark valley. Gorvel scowled at the sword in pilgrim’s hand, with astonishment and anxiety for the weapon’s size and the easiness with which the strange companion of Sir Thomas wielded it.

At the foot of the hill, the riders rushed at full tilt by the marauder guarding horses. He span round in confusion, holding the frightened horses. At last he grasped to mount, but barely had time to take reins when the screaming horde was upon him, a glitter of many narrow sabers. Several Hazars galloped on after the runaways, catching up with them: the horses of Hazars looked much lighter.

Oleg whirled his sword once more in the red light of sunset. Suddenly, the first of runaways vaulted off his horse, fell, rolled over his head, got up and started climbing the slope. Two others followed him: abandoned their horses, ran up on their fours, their arms and legs moving briskly.

In three score steps from the cleft with two knights and the pilgrim, the marauders span round in confusion, like loaches on a hot pan. The three runaways were pursued by dismounted half-naked barbarians. The marauders were on their way. Two of them made up their mind at once, leapt out of the shelter. Before Oleg dropped his sword and snatched the bow, they had dashed aside and vanished among stones, with only a clatter of pebbles beneath heavy boots. A thickset bare-breasted marauder in a feathered helmet turned to the cleft and cried, “Hey! Those devils took our horses!”

“Grudge?” Oleg said with surprise. “You stole them!”

“Took as loot,” the marauder objected. He gave a once-over to Franks, then to Hazars whose bodies glistened with sweat. There were two scores of them pursuing the runaways, the rest galloped at the foot, whooping and whistling. “Any ideas?” the marauder cried.

“Why do we need ideas?” Oleg replied arrogantly before Gorvel or Thomas could say a word. “You got between the hammer and the anvil. We’ll stay above and watch you skinned, your guts dragged out, your bones broken… You’ll have a very slow death: Hazars are skillful in it. And they love it.”

The marauder twitched his mouth in a smile. “Should we be upset for you seeing the details badly? They’ll do the same to you, won’t they?”

“I’m persuaded,” Oleg flung out carelessly. “Drag your gang here!” The marauder gave out a short cry. His men jumped up and followed their leader up the slope, hurried by the terrible beastly howling of Hazars coming from behind.

Thomas gasped with indignation, his face turned red, eyes popped out. “Sir wonderer! How dare you!.. I can tolerate you accepting this rat — he was a brave knight long ago. But these… they…”

Gorvel gave a predatory smirk. “…once were soldiers of our glorious hosts,” he jeered. “That’s all right. Look! There are some worse men running! And I swear on Holy Grail that your strange pilgrim would accept them too!”

The Black Beard and two of his gang were climbing behind the marauders, almost up with them. The villains had exhausted faces stained with mud, the last one had his hair matted and stuck up, like a comb, with dry blood. However, the three of them retained their sabers and daggers, bows and full quivers looking out from behind their shoulders.

Thomas was seething, his voice lost to fury. Gorvel looked ready for anything, his back pressed on the steep, the gleaming sword in hand — but his eyes were fixed on the pilgrim, his whole manner showed he was just an armored warrior while all the leadership and responsibility was upon this… very holy pilgrim.

The marauders were the first to run to the shelter. Oleg nodded towards the left end of the cleft. They obeyed at once, as former soldiers, stood there with bare swords and closed shields.

The villains came running, rattling, frequently collapsing on the ground. “You didn’t come,” the Black Beard cried hoarsely. “We decided to follow…”

“Guard the right end,” Oleg ordered. The Black Beard nodded, his breast heaving. The three of them put arrows on bow strings, turned to the hill foot. Hazars were running up fast, bent forward like spiders, moving their limbs briskly, stones poured down from under their feet.

“They have no bows,” Oleg said. “Let them as close as possible!” He could have shot any Hazar by that time, but the villains would also start shooting their cheap bows of village hunters then. Unfeathered, unsighting arrows. It will be good for them to hit in twenty steps. “Shoot after I do,” he warned severely.

He waited for a while, shot an arrow into the breast of a big Hazar, almost the last of climbers, fingertips took another arrow at once, it went straight into another foe’s eye, then he shot the third Hazar, the fourth, always selecting the farthest ones, as the closer would be reached by villains.

Below, there were ferocious cries, screams, shrieks, clang of steel. Five out of the twenty Hazars had run up to the crevice. The marauders jumped out to meet them with flashes of curved swords. A cut-off forearm fell to Oleg’s feet. Hazars screamed in high-pitched voices, marauders swore. Thomas and Gorvel rushed to help them but came at the moment when the last Hazar collapsed, splashing his blood around, on the dead bodies of congeners.

The marauder with naked breast bared his teeth in fierce smirk. “See the worth of soldier guard, konung?” he cried to Oleg. “My name’s Roland.”

One marauder was wounded, the rest splattered with blood of others. Oleg climbed on a stone ledge. Below, at its very foot, a huge half-naked barbarian was fidgeting on his horse. His face was painted with colored clay, a saber glittered in hand.

“Make a fire,” Oleg said softly, without looking back. “Cut green twigs off the bushes behind you.”

Gorvel raised his eyebrows in fascination. “Some magic?”

“Yes,” Oleg told him. “The most powerful one! They want to speak to us.”

The villains ran to the bushes eagerly, cut both just over their roots, while marauders made a fire deftly for all to see. When blue-grey clouds of smoke began to rise, with different intervals, above Hazar camp, Oleg covered the fire with branches, removed them, put down again for a while and flung away: the green leaves had rolled up in tubes, the thick smoke about to turn fire. He stood up, fingered the hilts of throwing knives. “I’ll go and see what they want.”

“Go to these devils?” Thomas cried in awe.

Gorvel watched him with disapproval. Marauders and villains, bunched in two close groups, argued with heat, cast suspicious glances at the pilgrim. The marauder who called himself Roland said loudly, “Are you going to sell us to those beasts?”

Oleg did not reply. “Keep your sword bare,” he told Thomas. “We’ll meet at the middle, and you… you and Gorvel show you are ready to come to my aid. You’ll have a shorter run down than Hazars — up the slope to their chieftain.”

“Do you expect an ambush?” Thomas asked anxiously.

“Just in case. It will come right if they see us at call.”

At the foot of the hill, Hazars were roasting meat, turning a huge spit with a whole saiga. Horses had been taken away. A tall barbarian was climbing up the slope. His body was covered from head to feet with drawings in colored clay. A pair of short leather pants made all his clothing. His thick wrists gleamed with massive bracelets, and armlets of the same metal embraced his arms just above elbows.

Oleg looked at him closer, slowed down his pace. The barbarian glanced above once or twice. As he saw his ruse discovered, he went up faster, in quick steps.

Oleg shuddered as he watched the leader of Hazars coming. To the waist he was naked but looked as though clad in bony armor composed of many fragments, with their edges covering each other. Joints were marked by swollen scars that had turned bone or even stone. On his belt of coupled iron plates, he had a huge Arabian sword and, on another side, an axe with curved blade.

The Hazar was heavier and more massive than Oleg. His legs resembled thick logs, he was all covered by a dark bark of his “bone armor.” No sword will slash through it, no iron arrow hit. Oleg remembered him as a fierce and fearless warrior, but as the years passed, his friends died, only few lived to be old and killed, in Khazarian way, by own grandchildren for being useless — this one was still riding fiery horses, making forays and bringing captives. In the best years of Khazar Kaganat, he became a warrior hero, scary in his might.

But ages passed since that. The Kaganat was shattered with a sudden blow of furious Svyatoslav. The few Khazar survivors scattered, dissolved among neighbor nations. Only this invulnerable warrior, whom the last generations called Karganlyk, gathered a hundred of the same implacable fighters as himself and continued foraying. Not on Rus’, where a sure death awaited, but on Pechenegs and Kumans. He robbed them, going farther and farther to the south.

Oleg looked in Karganlyk’s face, as motionless as a tortoise shell, with pity.

Karganlyk’s stone jaws came apart slowly. “You again, my Old Enemy?” he roared.

“I haven’t met you for ages, Karganlyk,” Oleg said instead of greeting, as he wished neither good day nor good night to such an enemy.

“Why did the Old Sorcerer come again to the land of Khazar?” Karganlyk asked him,

“The dog had a house,” Oleg replied gloomily. “Until the rain burnt it. Where do you see the land of Khazar?”

Karganlyk stamped his foot angrily. “This is our land!”

“The dog had a house,” Oleg said again. “The northern lands of the Khazar Kaganat were taken by the princes of North, the eastern lands — by Kumans and Pechenegs, and southern… But you came not to discuss old times, did you? I have much to recall with pleasure, but why should you re-open the old wound?”

Karganlyk glowered at him. The Hazar’s heart pounded, raising a hot wave. He had already been a field chieftain when he met that sorcerer. A sorcerer and hermit whose cave had been ruined, so he walked across Khazarian steppes to the south to become, as he explained, an anchoret in deserts. That was the time Obadia had just adopted the true faith and burnt the old tribal gods, declaring them to be idols. He ordered to capture the hermit and sacrifice him to the new god to mark his triumph. However, on the way to the nomad camp the sorcerer managed to free himself, slaughter the five strongest warriors, and steal the best horses. The numerous pursuers were killed by his arrows or drowned in a bog. Only on the fifth day did Karganlyk, with ten young daredevils, come upon him! And Karganlyk was the only one to survive, though his two arrow wounds still kept ached at bad weather.

“Leave others to me,” he said harshly. “And you may go. We are enemies but, strangely, I feel no hostility. You witnessed the grandeur of Khazar Kaganat, its glory! That’s why I don’t want to kill you.”

“Well,” Oleg agreed. He watched Karganlyk’s motionless face closely. “I leave them all. May I choose the horse and things for myself?”

Karganlyk nodded, his eyes were full of great astonishment, then he checked himself and added, “Not everything. You can take all the horses and things… save one small cup.”

“It’s no gold,” Oleg spoke slowly, his eyes fixed on Karganlyk’s face. “Neither silver… Why do you want it?”

Karganlyk moved his enormous shoulders heavily. “And you?”

“It’s important for my friend. A sacred thing of his faith. But your faith is different.”

“I strengthen it by throwing down the gods of others!” Karganlyk said sharply.

“I’ve heard much of that… When you defile the shrines of others, you throw mud into the face of your god. You flung down the gods of Slavs, Normans, Bagdad, and Byzantium… but destroyed only a god in yourself.”

“I’ll keep the cup,” Karganlyk snapped. “Take all the rest if you like!”

Oleg nodded, his eyes were sad. “I see. Tell me: who set you on two lone travelers? We are entrapped. You can speak bluntly.”

Karganlyk gazed at his old enemy. His painted face twitched, his lips stretched into thin lines, his sharp wolfish teeth flashed. He looked eager to say the dreadful truth, to fling it into his eyes, to see fear in the Old Sorcerer’s face — but Karganlyk might have recalled Oleg escaping in spite of bounds, or he was restrained by some other reason, but he only growled, “A dog is set on. And I’m a great chieftain! My life is guarded by gods.”

“Yes,” Oleg agreed with no hint of jeer, “you’re a great chieftain. Of a great tribe. Though not numerous, is it? Do you have hundred men? Ten years ago, you had thousand. And twenty years ago — ten thousand. How many will you have next year?”

Karganlyk clenched his stone jaws. He had barely retained from a strike, his fingers fumbling about his belt. “One hero is enough to give birth to a new nation,” he said in a dull voice. “You know it.”

“I know,” Oleg agreed. “A hero. Not a beast.”

Karganlyk’s eyes flashed. “Whilst I live, the people of Khazar lives!” he snarled.

“Even gods die,” Oleg told him.

Chapter 13

Karganlyk straightened up, his eyes blazing. Oleg put his hand on the sword hilt. For a while, they tried to crack each other with eyes, then Karganlyk turned away and ran down, jumping among the rocks sprightly. Down in the valley, Hazars stirred, rushing to meet him. Oleg hurried up the slope, saving his distance to Hazars, poor archers. No Khazars anymore. Those were splendid riders and marksmen, dangerous enemies. These are just a bestial gang: unable to build anything, and even out of their skill to destroy.

The northern end of the cleft was guarded by marauders, the southern — by villains. The helmets of two knights glittered over the middle of the ridge. Mortal enemies, they, however, felt more in common with each other than with other men, brigands and deserters. Chachar bustled among the three groups like a messenger among warring hosts. She was the only one welcome anywhere. Her cheeks flushed with happiness. That’s her paradise — only men around.

“How’s your trade?” Gorvel cried to Oleg, while Thomas breathed out with relief..

“As usual: no swindle, no sale. He offered us to leave the cup and get away.”

Ronald uttered a loud hem. “We need agree!” he expressed the common opinion of his comrades and also villains. “Even if cup is golden, our lives are golder!”

Gorvel and Thomas said nothing. Chachar grasped Oleg by hand, her eyes glittered with tears. “You refused? Why?”

“After he takes a cup, he will take us.”

“What’s the point for him to lose his men?” Gorvel said warily. “We’ll kill much of his, and he’ll gain only the same thing he hopes to get for nothing!”

“He doesn’t need the cup,” Oleg replied. “He needs us. He was told that Sir Gorvel carries all the family jewels with him. They cost enough to hire a small army or build a medium-sized fortress. Sir Gorvel, you may find it hard to believe that your masters have set him on you, but it’s in the spirit of progress. Hazars can’t be commanded in the way you were, but these base creatures are easy to be manipulated by playing on their greed, envy, and malice!”

Gorvel turned pale, his hand darted to the sword hilt. At once, Thomas and Roland, the leader of marauders, drew their swords and covered the wonderer. “And the cup…” Oleg continued. “Karganlyk will give it to those who pointed at the rich prey, as a gratitude for their hint. Who needs that plain cup, Sir Gorvel?”

Gorvel sheathed his sword with a thud, turned away. The marauders and villains exchanged suspicious, unbelieving glances. Kings, basileuses, and sultans were legendary creatures. Just as gods, demons, and peries. None of those is to be encountered by ordinary men, so forget them and only rely upon your own strength, fortune, and lucky star!

“What will we do?” Roland inquired. He stepped out of the group of marauders. “Holy father, we see you definitely have met these devils before. And those meetings might have been hard, as you know their military habits. That horned devil was talking to you respectfully, we all saw. And he’s the kind of demon to escape no censer but a hard fist. And he kept glancing, other men say if I lie, at your fists, not your charms!”

Oleg fingered absent-mindedly the charms on his breast. “We’ll have to wait. We can’t leave without horses. The mountain must have been surrounded, but they won’t attack at night. I know it.”

“We ran short of water,” Roland reminded. He licked his dry lips. “And they’ll pour it over selves in the morning! A spring half a mile from here.”

Oleg shook his head sadly. “We have no other choice. The roads are busy here. The forces of Barons and Saracens often ride through this valley. If any of them comes, the wild Hazars will be driven away. They are hated by everyone.”

Roland stepped back but his eyes were doubtful. The marauders took a quiet counsel, and the Black Beard, who had kept silent up to that moment, roared, “If! Your ‘if’ brought death to all of mine! Let the pilgrim have his ways, and we’ll have ours. Once it’s dark, we try to break through. Some of us die, but others live. Or we all die with this fool!”

Thomas blushed, his hand darted to the sword hilt. Gorvel puffed up, stepped closer to him. Oleg flung his fist swiftly. There was a muffled tinkle of helmet. For a moment, the Black Beard stood with goggled eyes, then his knees bent, he collapsed face first. The dumfounded villains watched his iron helmet, which had fell to the ground, and a dent in it, then shifted their gazes to the bare fist of peaceful pilgrim.

“You… killed him?” Gorvel asked.

“It would have pleased Hazars. He’ll soon come to.”

Gorvel breathed out with relief. “I’m glad that you are our sultan, sheikh, and king! If I were you, I couldn’t help killing that churl!”

Thomas bent his head and said nothing: he’d also have killed the villain with great pleasure. The Black Beard groaned, turned on his back with effort. A marauder who was smirking malevolently from ear to ear kicked the empty helmet to him, left it in the position for the dent to be well seen.

The Black Beard’s hair on the left side of the head was matted with blood. He moaned and sat up, resting both hands on the ground. “Take your cut-throats,” Oleg told him mildly. “The watch before midnight is yours. Then these brave soldiers of imperial guard change you.”

The Black Beard touched his badly-hurt head, stood up and left without saying a word. Even villains can’t object to such forcible arguments.

At night, Oleg and Thomas crawled on their bellies on the bare ground, peering at the rocks shimmering in the starlight. The silence was broken by rare howls of jackals. In the valley far below, a red fire could be seen. In times it disappeared, as a vigilant sentinel walked past.

Gorvel had a long talk with Roland, glancing back at Thomas and Oleg frequently. They seemed to have reached a consent at last, as they covered themselves with cloaks and lay down to sleep. Villains stood the first watch. Chachar sat with them for a while, staring in the dark with resent for Thomas for his paying her too little attention. However, she was almost the first to fall asleep.

Oleg fingered his charms. A wooden figure of hare was caught frequently. If he got the right meaning of that sign sent by his eternal, all-seeing and all-knowing soul, someone was going to run away, trying to save his skin.

The Black Beard, with his bandaged head, was lying at the other end of the cleft. Next to him, Oleg saw the heads of his survived villains. One of the marauders, a taciturn beastlike man, sat beside them, exchanging some quiet remarks with them.

Thomas and Oleg looked at each other. Thomas alerted, pulled his sheathed sword towards himself. “Is there a way out?” he whispered hopefully. “I must get out!”

“I see. The Holy Grail–”

“Krizhina waits for me! If I linger, brothers will make her marry!”

“Oh, that’s serious, I see. But we have to wait. For some host to pass by, for something else to happen… This land is no wild steppes for Hazars to invade without being seen! Someone somewhere is already blowing trumpets, saddling horses…”

“They’ll be late,” Thomas sighed. “We have to set hopes upon a miracle.”

Oleg heard a heavy sigh in the dark, as if one were carrying the whole cleft on his back. He smirked sadly. All the way, the knight had been telling with ardor about the miracles made by first Christians at the least occasion. And when nothing is left to us but belief in miracles, he lost his heart.

Far below, on the left side of their crevice, a stone tapped lightly on stone. As the man saw himself spotted, he dashed across the moonlit area and vanished in the shade, only his hard soles stamped hastily on the rocks.

Oleg glanced back at the sentinels. The Black Beard was in place, one of his villains with him, a sullen marauder sitting nearby and grinding his dagger, but another villain had disappeared. The Black Beard shook his fist angrily after the runaway.

Gorvel swore. “I’d rather expect it of their leader! That scum is going to those mountains. And Hazars are far. The bastard must have robbed us! And he’s leaving!”

“Will he leave?” Oleg asked with doubt. Thomas shifted his gaze between the wonderer and the red-bearded knight.

“I stake my arms and armor,” Gorvel said sharply, “on his successful leave. He walks light and far from Hazars. See their fire?”

Thomas looked at the far fire, far even from the foot of the hill. His face darkened.

“I bet my head to your armor, sir,” Oleg told Gorvel sadly. “Hazars have made fires there deliberately for us to see. In fact, two score of warriors lay in ambush among those rocks, in half a hundred steps from us, and listen, trying to guess what we do, what we are going to do, what we hope on. That’s a common tactics of Hazars! I’m surprised to find you, Sir Gorvel, a man of war, that easy to be dece–”

They heard a scream in hundred steps in the dark. A heavy body hit against the stone, pebbles clattered down the slope. A scream again: muffled, as if the man was silenced while uttering it. Dead silence fell, broken only by distant sounds of fast feet running away.

Thomas turned to Gorvel briskly, with his eyes shining like lynx’s and a wide smile from ear to ear. “You armor, Sir Gorvel!”

“Not now,” Oleg interfered hurriedly. “He’ll need it to fight.”

Gorvel fidgeted, as he forced himself to speak with great embarrassment and displeasure. “Sir Thomas, I’ve lost my armor. It belongs to sir wonderer. I, a knight, made a mistake. You and your friend know the ways of filthy barbarians better. That’s no surprise for me…”

Oleg saw Thomas’s face darkening in the faint moonlight and put his heavy hand on the knight’s shoulder to keep him from a furious lung. The cleft was dark. They heard marauders speaking in angry, irritated voices. “Keep a vigilant watch,” Oleg told them in a warning tone. “Over the rocks and bushes. Memorize their positions.”

A dark figure turned to him. When the man spoke, Oleg recognized the voice of Roland, the leader of marauders. “I know such tricks. They won’t steal up.”

“See to no one sleeping on the watch!”

Roland hemmed. His reply sounded a bitter irony. “Everyone heard of Hazars. A bit at least. Who can sleep when his hair stands on end?”

Oleg turned away from him. “Let no one try to get out alone!” Thomas added in a peremptory tone of a lordly knight.

Roland laughed. “If anyone nursed such idea, he trampled and grinded it by now!”

Oleg saw their faces, white in the dark. Woken up by the hushed voices, people looked at him with hope. He adjusted the bow and the quiver on his back, checked his knives. “I’ll go and have a close look at their camp.”

Thomas gasped. “But how you… get there? You’ve said we are surrounded. They sit behind every stone. A fly won’t pass!”

“There are no flies at night,” Oleg replied indifferently. “Only gnats… Sir Thomas, I’m not a steel-thundering knight, nor a villain. Slavs are taught as children to steal up to an animal! A child grasps a wild goose, an adult can jump on the back of the keenest deer… When coming back, I’ll give a whistle, so you won’t shoot me in case if you hear my steps.” He backed and vanished in the night. Thomas, Gorvel and all the rest listened tensely, watched the starry sky closely, but no star vanished behind a moving figure, no twig snapped, no pebble clicked.

A scatter of smooth stones looked like a herd of giant turtles frozen in the chill of the night. The sentinels kept counting the largest rocks. The Black Beard shot two arrows in a boulder that seemed suspicious to him and saw it sinking a bit, changing its shape slightly. When the moon came out again from behind a cloud, the boulder was not in place.

Oleg moved in the night, as silent as a bat. In times stopped, pressed against the ground, smelled unwashed bodies and horse sweat, listened to the creaks of belts and breath of men. Once he made out a full picture, to the smallest detail, he moved on, slipping past Hazars in their hide. There were not two scores of barbarians around their refuge, as Oleg had supposed, but twice that number, or even more. Karganlyk was so craving to get the Holy Grail that he’d sent half his tribe to guard, for no one to slip out, to crawl away, to dig into burrows.

As Oleg lay on the rocks, he listened to jackals roaming around the Hazar camp. A skilled hunter reads the voices of animals as easily as their tracks, so Oleg, still being far from the camp, knew that there were no more than hundred Hazars and twice that number of horses, three bonfires, six killed rams, and human flesh cooked on spits: Hazars, unlike Khazars, used to eat not only dead enemies but their own dead too.

He slipped down into the valley, started stealing up to the bonfires. He stopped dead at the strange sounds: mumbles and measured trample, as if several men were making a gloomy ritual dance. Oleg sneaked closer and saw, against the starry sky, a massive wooden cross, a white body on it. The poor man was crucified. The villain who tried to escape alone. Oleg recognized the dark stripes on his body at once: they were where Hazars had cut the man’s skin off to make their belts of it. The villain’s mouth was gagged tightly. They don’t want his voice to get hoarse before time. They would let him shriek as much as he wished in the morning, for Oleg and his small party to see and hear what awaited for them.

Four Hazars were stamping on the soft ground around the cross dug into, driving stones and wedges under its base. Dark blood was streaming down the cross. The villain’s feet were set against the ground, otherwise the nails couldn’t have kept his body. Hazars had not only cut belts of him: they maimed the bottom of his belly, pulled out his male parts.

Noiselessly, Oleg took his bow off, emptied the arrows on the ground. He hesitated for a while and laid down a throwing knife too, though it was hard to shoot an arrow while lying and throwing a knife was even worse.

He loosed the first arrow after a thorough aim-taking. Then he’d snatch the next one by feather hastily, draw in a flash, shoot and grasp another arrow at once. The first Hazar was shot in throat, two more — in heads before they could cry, but the fourth one had time to see the glitter of arrowhead in the dark. He jumped aside, a saber flashed in hand.

Oleg threw the knife with force. The Hazar fell, the hilt stuck out of his left eye socket. Oleg caught the body, flinched at the blood pouring over him, put it noiselessly on the ground.

From the Hazar camp, he heard common sounds of any nomad camp where half of men are awake, whetting their swords, putting heads on their arrows and spears, while the sentinels mostly watch the bonfires and meat on spits.

He wiped the throwing knife clean, tucked it in place. While he ran around the cross and gathered his arrows, he kept listening to the sounds of noisy Hazar camp. He approached cautiously, flinching at every chirr of grasshoppers. There was no suspicious noise, no signs of alarm, and Oleg breathed out with great relief. At the blaze of farther bonfires, he saw many Hazars drinking heavily the befuddling soma, chewing death caps. Their faces twitched, contorted, froze in awful grimaces.

He was looking out for Karganlyk when someone pushed him on back. “Why ramble in dark?” an angry voice said in the spoiled tongue of Eastern Khazars who had turned Hazars. “Carry the wood–”

Oleg wheeled round, pulling out his knife. Two Hazars glared at him, the third one behind them was dragging a dry log with effort. Oleg kicked the first Hazar in groin. At the same time, the knife vanished from hand to appear as a hilt stuck in the throat of the second enemy. Oleg jumped on the third Hazar who dropped the log and goggled his eyes in fear. He let out a terrible yell that stopped abruptly with a shrill sob.

Oleg dashed aside, fell, rolled over his head and stopped dead, sprawling on the ground, his ear pressed on it. He heard screams at the camp, a loud clatter of hooves. Someone darted across the fire, scattering hot coals. The sleeping Hazars were jumping up with dreadful yells, in burning clothes. Only those befuddled by soma and death caps did not stir.

Oleg cast anxious glances at the dark sky. The light spot of moon vanished in fast running clouds in time, but another time it shone through them too brightly, threatening to fall out into the clear sky. He would be exposed then!

He ran off a bit, crouched, watching and listening to know who was where, how many of them, where they headed. Karganlyk did not show up, though Oleg heard his stentorian roar twice. He started to sneak there but soon heard the leader’s voice from another side, as if Karganlyk had felt the danger and was hiding or trying to decoy Oleg into ambush.

The turmoil went on. They found the bodies and are combing the valley through! Oleg started a quiet retreat to the mountain. Warned by the trample of hooves or feet beforehand, he fell on the ground each time, merged into its hummocks, pretended to be a boulder. One Hazar was too fast to come upon him, no time to dodge. Oleg had to punch him on head to stun.

Thomas and Gorvel were awake, peering at the far bonfires. In two steps, the Black Beard was scuffing with concentration, as he whetted his curved sword, checked it carefully with his nail, as thick as a hoof, and moved the rough whetstone lovingly on the blade again.

“You friend is a man of great courage,” Gorvel remarked at last. “A civilized man would never take such a risk, but he’s a Pagan, as those wild Hazars are. He’s a match for them.”

“He has enough civilization and enough culture,” Thomas snapped. “He knows the Holy Writ, though he doesn’t appreciate it. Sometimes it seems to me he has met all the great prophets in person: so profound his knowledge of their words and their ideas!”

“Then his soul belongs to Satan,” Gorvel told him with confidence. “Are you sure he’s not Satan himself? Or one of his servants? Not the least of them! Some things he does… I wonder whether they are possible for any man.”

Thomas pondered over it, then his face lit. “He held the Holy Grail in hands! And it can’t be touched by one with foul intents. By the way… Can you take it?”

Gorvel turned away. He stared into the dark for a long time. The reply he gave afterwards sounded steady and confident, as if he felt great powers behind. “I treat the cup of Christ’s blood with too much respect to lay dirty fingers on it. Once I’m back to my castle… either old or new one… a priest will absolve me of all my sins, however small. Then I’ll take it.”

“That will be a long confession,” Thomas said. “You’ll get old before you finish it!”

Chachar tossed anxiously in her sleep under Thomas’s cloak, whispered something. Thomas walked aside not to wake her, glad at the opportunity to move away from despicable Gorvel: the veil creature who robbed his guest of the Holy Grail and then tried to kill him treacherously, throwing heavy stones down at him… And this monster doesn’t burn of shame. He speaks to me as if nothing happened! He could keep closer to villains, men of his own sort, but instead he’s hanging around me, an honest man.

Suddenly, they heard screams from the dark valley below. The closest bonfire blazed up. Thomas saw tiny figures of men rushing around it, then some riders galloping past like ghosts. Then other bonfires blazed up too. There was a glitter of blades, furious shouts grew louder.

“They captured him!” Gorvel cried with obvious vexation.

“At least he managed to kill some of them!” Thomas replied angrily. “Unlike us. We’ll die without any glory.”

“They wouldn’t make such ado for nothing,” Gorvel agreed.

The Black Beard woke another villain up, cursing furiously. Together with the marauders who had jumped up, they peered with fear and anxiety at the far bonfires and darting figures. Then the Black Beard climbed out of the cleft. “We can get out!” he cried excitedly. “They have pilgrim, all their attention on him. I don’t know whose holy relics he worshipped, but I beat he’s killed at least one of theirs! And they forgot us!”

“And the devils that guard us?” another villain asked him.

“They must have run down. And if some remained… you’ve served in the imperial guard, haven’t you?”

The marauders exchanged glances, started to climb out of the cleft. Swords and daggers glittered in their hands. Chachar jumped up, wrapping herself in Thomas’s cloak with cold, and clung to the knight.

Gorvel hesitated, his eyes shifted from villains and marauders in their leave to Thomas and shivering Chachar. “Sir Thomas, we’ll have to join this scum for a while. Even if they die all, two of us, the strongest knights, will break through! And then we settle our dispute in combat. Agreed?”

“No,” Thomas snapped resolutely. “My friend is captured by enemies. I’m bound to save him. Or die trying to save him.”

“Bound!” Gorvel jeered. “What about our duel?”

“My sword will find you, scoundrel,” Thomas told him with loathing. “But first I’ll try to rescue sir wonderer. If I perish, it will be a death of Christian warrior.”

“Your death will be neither Christian nor worthy of a warrior,” Gorvel objected. “You don’t see what’s behind you!”

Thomas wheeled round — and saw empty mountain slope, all dark. He heard Chachar squeal in fright, started turning back to Gorvel but a violent header came down on him. With a flash of white fire before eyes, he fell silently on the ground, rolled few steps down into the cleft. Gorvel raised his axe to descend there and cleave the knight’s head, but the marauders and villains had vanished from sight: he could only hear their heavy breath, clang of arms, and trample of feet. He swore and ran after them, sent the crying Chachar flying off his way.

Weeping loudly, Chachar collapsed on the cold iron body. Thomas did not stir, and when she managed to raise his visor a bit, her fingers found something wet, hot, and sticky.

A red stripe emerged on the east, but the knight’s unblinking eyes were fixed on the fading stars.

Chapter 14

They ran past the first belt of stones, then the second one — and clashed suddenly with Hazars, only two of them. A villain fell with his head cleaved but the Hazars were slashed, and the party rushed down, stamping their boots. There was no point trying to conceal themselves anymore: before the barbarians died, they’d screamed, and a scream answered from below.

Twice they were caught up by Hazar parties gathered in a hurry. Gorvel and marauders passed through both of them and lost no men. Only the last of brigands, the Black Beard, fell down, transfixed with two arrows. Dying, he broke the neck of a screaming sturdy Hazar who was tattooed all over.

For the third time — they had already changed from run to walk, almost sure they’d thrown Hazars off — a big party came upon them. A fierce battle struck up, and no one ran away. A savage beast awoke in every man. Hazars screamed, scratched, bit, and even spat, but marauders also went bestial: if they lost their swords, they gnawed at enemies.

When the fight was over, only three men stood on their feet among many bloodshed corpses: Gorvel, Roland, and one of his soldiers. The three of them bared their teeth, breathing heavily, too exhausted to move or speak. The valley was silent.

Gorvel raised his sword. “We have to get away,” he said in a hoarse voice. “We broke through but there are lots of devils back in the camp. And that horned monster!”

The eastern edge of the sky was going lighter. Gorvel could see the tired faces of his random companions. The stars were fading gradually. In the twilight of the dawn, some dark half-ruined rocks were seen here and there. The three men, making no common plan, hurried into the same conglomeration of stones. Once the sun rises, the Hazars will pursue us ahorse.

The clouds in the sky blazed red, as if they were splattered with blood, the air became clear and transparent — when the ground was knocked away from under their feet at once. Gorvel and marauders were so sure they’d left Hazars behind that they had no time to draw swords when half-naked bodies seemed to emerge out of thin air. A huge boulder flew up. Gorvel only had time to see that it was actually a shield, deliberately caked in mud, and glimpse Karganlyk’s ferocious face under it.

Gorvel gripped the sword hilt. A massive hulk fell on him, blocking his breath. He moaned and saw a glitter of evil joy in small malevolent eyes. He clenched his teeth, struggled away, but Karganlyk squeezed his body with more force. Gorvel’s bones cracked, a groan burst out with his breath. He tasted hot and salty. “To the valley!” Karganlyk ordered Hazars. “These ones will be dying a very long time, for our gods to rejoice!”

Gorvel was tied up to a stout pole. Four Hazars shouldered it, hastened down to the valley. Roland was carried behind. Gorvel heard curses and grasped that the third of their party had also been taken alive. He roared and swore dirtily but stopped in the middle of a sentence, Gorvel heard a muffled thud, as if a stone were hit by a thick stick.

The radiant edge of sun appeared over the horizon when the captives were eventually brought to the camp. Hazars tore clothes off them, threw Gorvel’s armor down in a heap, then pulled it on a wooden block. Roland clenched his teeth, gloomy and enduring, but another marauder, as he came to, reviled the torturers again: threated, mocked, and spat at them. Hazars went furious but no one, in fear of their formidable leader, dared to finish the captive off, which he obviously strove for. They spat on the three captives in return, flung clods of mud at them.

They were stretched face up on the ground, their limbs tied to dug-in stakes. Gorvel gritted his teeth, trying not to let a moan out, as his joints cracked, his sinews all but burst at the strain. He saw nothing but the sky and, in times, the laughing mugs of enemies. Ugly and tattooed, they jumped, grimaced, screamed. Many of them used the opportunity to water the sprawled enemies. Soon Gorvel was bathed in stinky urine. His head remained free, he could shake it sideways. Hazars laughed and slapped on their bare knees when the proud knight closed his eyes tight. Some ready-witted one fetched a wooden funnel, thrust it into the knight’s jaws, and watered into it, screaming happily and jumping, while Gorvel coughed desperately and choked. The mob around roared with laughter

Karganlyk appeared suddenly, furious. He kicked Gorvel, the knight heard the crunch of own broken ribs. “Where’s the Old Sorcerer? One with green eyes?”

Gorvel winced with pain in his broken ribs, but his lips curled in a malevolent smirk. “You haven’t got him?”

“I would if only I met him face to face! But he killed nine my best warriors! I will torture him for long, very long!”

“Catch him at first,” Gorvel croaked, feeling evil strength still in him. “Nine under your very nose? This wolf will kill all of yours, like sheep. He only plays a pious man… When devil is old, he shall take monkhood…”

Karganlyk kicked him again. That time he smashed the knight’s cheekbone to bleeding with joy. “Hey you, at the fire! Irons ready? Let’s see how tough he is.”

Hazars went darting eagerly around the fire. There was a crackle, a smell of iron burnt hot. Roland, crucified on Gorvel’s right, cried to cheer him up, “Hold on, sir! Let’s show these monsters how a European dies!”

“Show the infidels how the soldiers of imperial guard die!” another marauder shouted, interspersing it with curses.

“I need no encouragement from scum like you,” Gorvel told them angrily. “Shut up! Everyone dies alone.”

Karganlyk snatched a rod from the Hazar who came running. Its crimson end emitted dry heat. “When you trample on the faith of others”, he roared wildly, “you confirm your own! It’s the behest of our forefathers.” His eyes glittered with madness, yellow saliva foamed in the corners of his mouth. Looking in Gorvel’s face, he started bringing the red-hot rod to the knight’s eyes.

Gorvel tried not to wink. He looked straight at the rod, despite his face burnt with heat and his eyebrows crackling. He smelled burnt hair.

Karganlyk touched Gorvel’s nostrils slightly with the red-hot end, then took it away, watched the knight grimace helplessly, suppressing a cry. As he started bringing the rod down again, he promised, “You’ll be screaming for very long…”

Suddenly, he shuddered from head to feet, straightened up convulsively, his back bent in such a way as if the small of it were hit by a log. His mouth opened for a silent cry. A wooden shaft topped with a white feather was in his left socket. The arrowhead had broken through his skull and gone out from the back of the head, dripping with blood. In spite of terror and disgust, Gorvel spotted that the arrowhead looked no iron but a strange silvery metal shimmering like moonlight!

Karganlyk sobbed, raised his hands, as though to grip the injured place. His fingers unclenched, the red-hot rod dropped on Gorvel’s bare chest. Karganlyk swung back and forth, hanging over the sprawled Gorvel, then collapsed slowly on his back. The hard heavy body hit the ground with a force that made it tremble and lurch.

Disbelieving, Hazars watched their invincible leader whose face was now covered with dark blood, red bubbles rose from the gurgling mass in place of his socket. Immortal Karganlyk, the awe and demigod of their tribe, the hope of rebirth of their bygone glory… lay in dust, as dead as a road stone!

Someone screamed in terror, turned and ran away. Other backed, their widened eyes fixed on the ruin of their leader. A dreadful shriek burst out from them before they wheeled round and fled without choosing their way. The tread of bare feet was everywhere, along with the stiffing dust raised by them, the clatter of stones. Mad Hazars were climbing up the slope, having abandoned their horses, things, camp, and captives.

Roland and his man stopped cursing, turned their heads after the runaways. Gorvel groaned through gritted teeth: the damned Hazar had dropped the red-hot rod on his naked body and before it got cold, a furrow was branded in his flesh! The knight smelled his own burnt flesh as he breathed.

When the footfall died away, the strange pilgrim, a friend of Sir Thomas, showed up. He walked unhurriedly, without looking around, the bow and quiver of arrows jutted out over his shoulder. On his go, he drew a knife, cut Roland’s hands free in two easy moves.

The leader of marauders goggled his eyes. “Why they took such a flight? Three score men!”

“Karganlyk was a live god to them,” Oleg explained. “Without him, they are nothing.”

Another marauder, still stretched on the stakes, swore. “You know how to treat them, holy father!” he said with a malevolent smirk. “You know… The arrowhead no iron — it’s silver! I have keen eye for such things.”

Wincing, Roland kneaded his swollen wrists. His back was numb, he bent forward with effort to untie his feet. “Barbarians!.. We, soldiers of imperial guard, would have fought to the last man. Whether the Emperor alive or dead, we are personalities! No wild mob.”

Oleg nodded. “Look here, personality. See a hundred of Hazar horses over there? No, twice that number. Unsaddled, but that’s how they do. Such horses are a fortune for you, aren’t they?”

Roland bared his big teeth. “Holy father! May your Pagan gods reward you for your kindness. This is our Christian God, and all the saints and martyrs, who speak with your mouth now. Two poor former soldiers of imperial guard do have a great need of two Hazar horses. Of four, if to count spare ones!”

He tossed the rope off his feet, got up. A saber abandoned by some Hazar glittered aside. He took it, cut the limbs of his comrade free. Supporting each other, they plodded to the horses that grazed in the thick green grass. As they walked, they picked up things left by Hazars: weapons, clothes, boots. Roland’s comrade glanced back at Oleg thievishly, as he grabbed Gorvel’s thin coat of mail and expensive sword of Damask steel. Oleg nodded as a sign that Gorvel had no further need of those. Smirking openly, the marauders caught horses and rode away. Each of them had taken two remounts.

Behind Oleg, Gorvel croaked with his dry throat, “It’s time to unbind me too!”

Oleg turned to him with a still face. “Faithful Christians are saved by angels, as your legends say. Are you a Christian? No, because you serve the Secret Seven.”

“Damn you! What do you want?”

“Nothing,” Oleg replied sadly. “Before I came here, I’d been to our cleft. Yes, I found Sir Thomas.” He turned his back to Gorvel, made a couple of steps away, turning the scattered Hazar things with the toe of his boot.

Gorvel twitched helplessly, being stretched in the sturdy ropes, cried after Oleg in a strained voice, “You are worse than Hazars!.. That’s a war! One of us had to die. I had to kill him, and I killed…”

Oleg picked a bag up, thrust his forearm inside, searching, Suddenly, his motionless face lit with a condescending smirk. He pulled out the familiar cup with greenish edges, looked it over, tossed back into the bag and then told Gorvel with a slight surprise, “Why do you think you’d killed? Thomas is a knight, not a thinker. His weak point is his heart, not head.”

He shouldered the bag and made his way to the foot of the mountain. Gorvel groaned, as he had nobody more to conceal his despair in front of. Some dark points sprang up in the blue cloudless sky. They expanded slowly, moving in uneven circles. Bathed in own sweat and the urine of others, Gorvel suddenly felt cold under the scorching rays of southern sun. He did not know who were first to come to the battlefield in these lands: crows, griffons, eagles, vultures, or jackals, but he had no doubt that soon he would know it.

He closed his eyes convulsively, almost feeling a strong beak pecking on his eyeballs.

* * *

At the fork in the road, Oleg reined up in hesitation. The mountain and the valley where the last Hazars — barbarized offspring of the proud founders of Khazar Kaganat — had terminated their existence was behind them. Chachar and Thomas, still pallid, rode mighty Frankish horses. Behind each of them, two remounts carried their load.

Thomas suffered of pounding in his ears. He did not mind where to go. All he wanted was to get as soon as possible to his native Britain where beautiful Lady Krizhina counted in fear the days that remained before Saint Boromir’s Day. The next morning after it, her brothers, hating Thomas, would force her to the altar with abominable Meloun who had no virtues but a long pedigree and a pair of short legs!

Oleg hesitated. The broad road straight ahead is broken, in some several hundreds of miles, by a narrow strait that separates two worlds: Asia and Europe. On the opposite shore, there lies Constantinople: the city of cities, the second Rome. And if they ride straight for some more hundreds or thousands of miles, the road will lead them to the next channel, with gloomy rocks on the other shore of it: the cold shore of Britain. “We’ll spend the night here,” he resolved suddenly. “Something wrong about the city ahead.”

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas said in a faint voice, “it seems to me we’ll have to winter among Saracen!”

“Sir Thomas, you don’t cling to your life, but what about the cup?”

Thomas touched the bag involuntarily. Now he would not allow the cup away from himself even for a moment. He carried it on his mount, mistrusting other horses.

“Sir Thomas, you’d better lie down,” Chachar said hastily.

“If that’s an invitation…” Thomas began hesitantly.

“You look unwell,” she hurried to explain.

They dismounted aside from the road, in a bunch of trees. Oleg unsaddled horses, while Thomas and Chachar went for brushwood. Chachar boasted she knew herbs from her grandmother, a famous witch, and promised to gather them. Thomas gave Oleg an awkward look, warning him not to expect any wood to be brought then.

Oleg gathered some dry twigs himself, made a fire and peered at the dancing flames. He saw distinctly the riders galloping, birds flying, flapping wings of dragons and ferocious faces of warriors, hands raised in begging, the glitter of sabers… In fire, everything changes swiftly, vanishes and comes back in a different shape, showing only a bit of its nature, a hint. But sorcerers are taught to know the trouble by a flash, as a hunter knows the bird by its feather and the animal by its single hair!

He felt his hair raised with fear. A mortal danger waited for them just at the city gate! Something vague but related to blood, axes, horse hooves. If they went left, then across the river, on the other side of the ferry, there was an ambush of Saracen assassins. They’ll shoot point-blank from strong crossbows — who gave British crossbows to them? — and finish us off with curved Damask sabers. The road on the right was barred by something indistinct but abominably dangerous. We’ll definitely fall into its dreadful spider clutches if we go there…

His hair stirred with terror and revulsion. He raised his hands with effort, clutched at his charms, like a drowning man clutches at the tree roots hanging down. His fingertips darted on the tiny wooden figures, searching for a consolation, a salvation, any loophole among the surrounding traps, snares, and pitfalls.

Thomas came back, against expectation, with a huge armful of big thick poles. When Oleg asked about Chachar, he shrugged and pointed vaguely at the north. Oleg boiled a herbal potion. He would collect herbs at any occasion, even stoop from the saddle on the go to pluck flowers. In case of need, he stopped, dismounted, dug the whole plant out, trying not to damage its roots. He filtered the potion to remove scum, let it settle. Thomas lay near the fire with a faint smile: the very smell of the potion was enough to stop his headache, to add some strength.

The shadows cast by nearest trees were growing longer until they merged into a thick black veil. The crimson sunlight moved up the trunks, threatening to fly up over their tops soon and vanish. The light blue sky was turning navy blue. In its right half, a pale crescent showed itself, the first stars flashed. “Where the hell is she?” Oleg said in vexation.

“Searching for herbs,” Thomas replied awkwardly. “Doing her best, sir wonderer. I’m not glad myself that I’ve taken her as a burden, but… it happened this way.” Moaning in times, he climbed out of his armor, put the iron pieces near the fire to fry the maggots of pernicious flies.

“Where did she find herbs here?” Oleg grumbled with a contempt he could not conceal.

“Behind the grove. She wanted to please you. You look so formidable, severe. She’s afraid of you.”

“Behind the grove?” Oleg repeated anxiously. “Too far. Not enough time for her to come back by night.”

“She took a horse,” Thomas said in a guilty voice. “Doing her best! It’s sinful to blame such a sheep she is. That sort is forgiven by God.”

“She’s a featherbrain, Sir Thomas! But how could you let her go?”

Thomas looked aside awkwardly, his cheeks flushed. “Sir wonderer. I was in a difficult situation. I told her about my fidelity to fair Krizhina, and she told me we wouldn’t be seen! I said that the Holy Virgin condemns even sinful thoughts, and she said you were already sleeping. Or busy cooking a hare with those spices that set our blood on fire…”

Oleg sat grim and silent. Thomas’s voice sounded muffled, as if his ears were full of wool. The fire blazed, flames changed swiftly: bloody-dark shadows gathered there, highlighted by orange, almost white flashes. Ghostly riders galloped swiftly, arrows flew, towers collapsed, cities burnt…

“Should we search for her?” Thomas offered feebly but did not stir.

Oleg glanced at the dark sky swarming with stars and shook his head. “Too dark to see tracks. If she’s not back by dawn, we’ll ride to find her then. Summer nights are short here. You can barely have a sleep before the day breaks.”

Chilled, Thomas woke up of cold. The fire had burnt down. Against the lightening sky, he saw a figure of giant carrying saddles, sword baldrics, and Thomas’s lance away. Horses were snorting aside, rich grass crunched in their teeth. Not until the dark figure came to the horses and started to saddle, did Thomas shake his sleepy torpidity off and jump up, shivering and flinching. “She didn’t come?”

“I’ve missed her,” Oleg replied sullenly. “Let’s go and find her.”

“Forgive me, sir wonderer. It’s all my fault… My double fault. We’d better have left her in that house.”

They mounted. Thomas checked himself and thanked the wonderer with a casual nod, as he was not obliged to saddle the knight’s horse. A common man, but a free yeoman, not a landed villein. If he shows me respect, I must treat him the same, as ordered by Our Lady. “To the grove?” Thomas asked.

“Go there. And I’ll ride to the left. There’s a slope down to a stream sided by rich grass. Lots of different roots. Both medicinal and poisonous.”

Thomas dashed to the grove while Oleg drove his horse in an easy trot, watching the grass closely. The prints of deer and boar hooves were frequent, and the green grass blades were trampled down where smaller animals had been lying.

As Oleg rode across a narrow valley overgrown with sparse shrubs, he heard a move behind far branches. Instantly, he rolled off the saddle and on the ground, to escape an arrow shot or a knife thrown at him, stopped behind a thick bush and became all ears.

The valley was silent, except for carefree grasshoppers chirring. Butterflies fluttered everywhere, undisturbed, even over that suspicious bush. Oleg’s stallion remained in place, nibbling with a crunch at the fresh green leaves. His ears twitched angrily, as he drove away a big dragonfly that kept trying to seat itself on their upright hairy ends. In a soft whisper, Oleg ordered the horse to stand still — the master knows better — and started to move in short quiet rushes, stooping behind shrubs, his throwing knife ready in hand.

On the other side of the bushes, a saddled horse grazed peacefully on a green lawn. Oleg returned noiselessly to his own horse, mounted and rode around the shrubs, looking for the rider, either dead or alive.

At the sight of Oleg, the empty horse gave an anxious snort, alerted but did not run away. On the contrary, it went toward him in a careful pace, greeted his stallion with a quite neigh. Oleg recognized the horse of Chachar, stroked the leather of its saddle. His fingers got sticky with blood.

Feeling creepy all over, Oleg seized its reins, spurred his stallion. Both horses dashed on at full tilt. Oleg kept his eyes on the hoof prints, barely visible on the hard ground.

Judging by tracks, Chachar’s horse had been strolling without the rider, stopping to nibble at the grass, then turned to drink from a stream, ate the tops of shrubs in two places. Thick grass was crumpled where the horse had been lying, kicking up and down playfully.

The sky was darkening too fast. Oleg looked up and groaned helplessly: a large dark cloud was coming upon, with bitter brief flashes of lightnings in its black depth. The wind blew in his back. That damned rain will wash the tracks off, faint as they are!

At a tilt, he stood up on his stirrups, looked around. The wind bent down the blades of sparse grass, the clouds climbed upon each other in many floors. Suddenly a white glare came inside one cloud, a menacing rumble came moments after. Nowhere in the steppes, as far as he could see, no one was lying, sitting, or waving at him.

He had to bend lower, peering at the blurry tracks until his eyes ached. In the dark that fell, he would have not noticed an arrow shot at him, a lasso thrown, or even one jumping onto his horse. The tracks were often lost… Suddenly his blood ran cold: he saw traces of two unshod horses on the left. Judging by the hoof prints, the horses were light and slim-legged, as most horses in this land, and their riders had no heavy armor on. Maybe they wore leather jacks: those would do to block a strike of light saber or a shot of homemade bow.

As traces told him, the riders had taken a brief counsel and ridden apart, searching for tracks of others. Once they got certain of a lone rider on their way, they rode on his tracks about a hundred of steps before they realized it was an empty horse. They could have spotted it before. That was when they retraced and urged their horses at a slow pace on the tracks of a pedestrian, often stopping to peer at the trampled grass and faint footprints.

Oleg whipped his horse. It was much easier to follow the tracks of two horses, so he galloped, jumped over shrubs. He saw the hoof prints were quite fresh. In some places, trampled grass was straightening before his very eyes, in others the milky white juice was still oozing from grass blades broken by sharp hooves.

In the falling dark, a fearful branchy lightning flashed, dazzling him. If her glare did not illumine the thickening twilight, Oleg would have bumped at full tilt into a couple of Arabian argamaks who stood in a narrow green valley. Somewhat farther in the valley, two shaggy ragged men, knives on their belts, were coming to Chachar with loud laughter. She backed, but one man rounded her in a wide arc. Chachar stopped, jerked her head up proudly. She was pale, her hair disheveled. Her eyes flashed with the same lightnings as the sky.

Oleg reined up, snatched his bow. The villains spotted the stranger, turned round to him: both sturdy, hardened, and reckless, clad in leather armor of buffalo skin, with plain hunting knives on their belts. Oleg drove his horse forward, stopped in ten steps from them. The huge hilt of two-handed sword looked out over his shoulder, an arrow on his bow string aimed at the men. Its iron head had an evil glitter. Both villains could see the stranger had no light Saracen bow but a formidable lamellar one: an arrow shot of it would go through steel armor.

“Chachar!” Oleg called loudly. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she replied in a thin voice and added hastily, “I’ve gathered many herbs! But these two fools hampered my way back.”

Oleg looked at the villains, though, actually, he never let them out of his sight before. “What do you want?”

One glanced at his comrade who froze at spot, his gaze fixed at the arrow. He estimated the distance to Oleg, to their horses left behind the armed stranger with cold green eyes — and spread his arms wide with a smile. “We just wanted to see. If she needs help. People must help each other. It’s what Christ wants, yeah?”

“It’s what all gods want,” Oleg said coldly. “And they want our help to be disinterested.”

The villain, feeling the danger passing by, broadened his smile, backed away from Chachar, trying to reach own horse in an arc. “Only disinterested! Otherwise it’s no help.”

“And deserves other reward,” Oleg agreed. He turned in his saddle, while his horse stood still, watched the villains round him cautiously, making no spare moves, mount quietly, ride a hundred of steps away in a slow pace. Only then they dared to whoop and gallop away.

Oleg turned to Chachar, nodded at her horse that stood behind still. “Mount! Quick!”

She darted to the horse with exaggerated obedience, climbed into the saddle. Her big eyes were fixed on his angry face. On her back, she had a tightly stuffed bag. Tender stalks with round blue leaves looked out of it through a slit. Oleg said nothing, as he had no wish to praise the woman. She’d try to consolidate her position then. However, he noticed she’d really collected the herbs of great healing power. And picked up in the correct time of the day, which is extremely important.

* * *

The two of them sat by the fire. Chachar gnawed at the roast quail wing and Oleg sorted the herbs out, trying to let nothing but polite interest show in his face, when they heard a clatter of hooves. Far away, there was the gleaming figure of the knight.

Thomas vaulted off, with easiness that had always surprised Oleg. The knight looked paler than usual. He limped, his armor was dented in two places. The right side of his helmet was matted, his eyebrows stuck together with sweat, his sky blue eyes dark with pain. “I ran into them on my way,” he replied with vexation to the anxious looks of Oleg and Chachar. “I can’t make way for strangers! What if they’re of lower birth?.. The fools pushed forward on me. The last two of them guessed to make way, but it was late…”

Chachar dashed to the knight anxiously, helped to unclasp his heavy armor, dropping the pieces on her legs. “Damn the steppes!” Oleg said sarcastically. “So little space that one can’t turn round!”

“Sir wonderer! That’s a matter of honor!”

“Would you like to eat?”

“I am saturated with the fight,” Thomas replied proudly, in the best knightly traditions.

Oleg did not try to persuade or argue. He even seemed to be glad. “That’s well! Then you will drink a potion we made.”

Thomas recoiled from the horribly stinking caldron of black liquid, with floating yellow blades of grass, which he would not throw even to his servant’s horse, and nasty bubbling foam. From time to time, sharp little claws emerged from inside, as if the wonderer had boiled bats or toads there. “Sir wonderer!..”

“You need it, dear sir. The Holy Virgin would have treat her knight to the cup of healing potion herself if only she was not that busy.”

Chachar hurried to take a full scoop, brought it to Thomas, trying to spill not a single drop of the precious potion, for which she’d suffered so much, got scared to a piglet’s squeal.

Oleg smiled derisively, as if he had little belief in the knight’s valor.

Thomas held his breath and took the scoop of nauseating potion with a firm hand.

Oleg ate unhurriedly the meat around the bone. His strange green eyes looked slowly over the lawn, overhanging branches, the ground trampled by hooves and feet. Chachar sat on the other side of the fire, eating quickly and accurately. She took the bones with two fingers, sticking the little one out. She neither spat out the bones nor blew her nose at the table, holding each of her nostrils in turn, in Saracen way.

Oleg tossed the bone away, wiped his greasy fingers. “Thomas, it’s our good luck that Chachar got lost.”

The knight started. “What’s the matter?”

“We had guests. While we galloped over groves and gullies in search of the maiden lost, they rode up to our fire from three sides, to encircle us. Behind that tree, I found a track of crossbow arc: someone was drawing a crossbow with its plate set against the ground. I think there were other crossbowmen as well.”

Thomas jumped up, his eyes were searching around anxiously. “Where are they?”

“They thought we had left fire as a lure before we rode away. By northern road, surely! At least their tracks go north.”

“They went after us? Then they’ll see their mistake soon…”

“You’ll have enough time to drink your potion,” Oleg assured. “Would you like some more of it? You are weak, and in this life you’ll need your strength earlier than you expect.”

Thomas looked at pale Chachar, put his hand to his heart and bowed.

Oleg got up, took the heavy bag off the saddle. “Three scores of well-armed warriors have been there. Chachar did us a great turn: she saved us from this fight. We must do the same to her.” He dropped the bag on the ground, it gave a ringing tinkle. Thomas raised his eyebrows, then his face lit up with a guess. Oleg untied the bag, his forearm plunged inside. “Sir Thomas, do we number in two or three?”

“Sir wonderer,” the knight replied with great dignity, “the woman entrusted herself to our protection!”

“Here we have five thousands in gold. I divide in three?”

“Women always need more, sir wonderer.”

“I know it. Who doesn’t?”

Chachar shifted a confused gaze between the men. Oleg poured the coins out on the ground, fingered them apart into three piles: one a bit larger than the rest. Thomas, with his broadest smile, picked that pile on a big kerchief, tied the knots. Chachar looked with embarrassment at Thomas rising up and tucking the kerchief of gold into the saddle bag on her horse. Meanwhile, Oleg poured the remnants into the bag they’d been in, tied it, started to pick up the caldron and blankets. “What does it mean?” Chachar asked.

“We see the city walls over there,” Oleg told her in a sweet voice. “It’s the city we promised to take you to. Sir Thomas and I would rather keep your company, but… you see what a dog’s life we lead? Sleeping on the bare ground, attacked by all the scum of these lands, as if we were smeared with honey… And there may be even worse nights waiting ahead: spent in bogs or on the wasp nests.”

Chachar shifted her indignant gaze to Thomas. The knight nodded and turned away to his horse, lest he see her accusing eyes. “Take your money back then!” she flared up. “Pious bloody men! You think I rode with you for money?”

Oleg patted her with affection on the head. “We have to leave. The assassins may come back here.”

At the fork in the road, Chachar whipped her horse and overrode them at once. It seemed to Oleg that she jerked her small nose up proudly only to prevent her tears from coming out. Her back was straight, her hair fluttered in the wind. Her horse trotted briskly, feeling the stables with other horses, fresh oats, and a long rest in the city soon.

When Chachar vanished from sight, Thomas gave out such a mighty sigh as if he had dropped a heavy boulder off, a boulder he had carried for such a long time that he went oblivious of it. “How fine… Sir wonderer, do you grudge the gold?”

“I’m a pilgrim,” Oleg reminded him. “A wonderer. Do you?”

“I’m a knight errant!” Thomas replied proudly, his back straightened up the same way as Chachar’s. “Sir wonderer, shall we number in two all the rest of our way?”

“If only you…”

“Never!” Thomas said fervently. “I swear it on the cup, on my sword, on the hooves of my horse!”

“Even in your Christian mythology,” Oleg pointed out, “the sin came out of Satan’s left ear and the woman was made of a left rib, that’s why she shall go on the man’s left, and the man’s left shoulder is seated by all the evil…”

“By demon,” Thomas corrected. He looked at the wonderer with great respect. “So one shall spit over the left shoulder… Do you Pagans spit too?”

“Sir Thomas, I have to upset you. We are turning our horses back to the south.”

Thomas leaned back in the saddle, as if a log socked him between eyes. His palm clapped on the sword hilt habitually, his face flushed angrily. “Sir wonderer…” he spoke in a constrained voice, hardly keeping his temper. “Krizhina waits for me!”

“Sir Thomas,” Oleg persisted, “I promised to ride with you to Tsargrad… to Constantinople, I mean. That’s why I’m ready to make a hook and over, sharing the danger with you. It’s not me hunted. Neither me bearing the Holy Grail!”

“Why south?” Thomas screamed in a blaring voice. He sounded as though in death throes. “My way lies north!”

Oleg stretched his arm to point at the road. “Straight to the north, a big party of hired robber knights with a score of crossbowmen is coming on us. To the west, there are assassins waiting for us. To the north-west, some strange people lie in ambush: charms only gave me a warning but did not show how they look… We will come back to the north. I live at the north myself. But we’ll have to round the city and its lands in a broad arc.”

Cursing like Black God, Thomas drove his horse after the wonderer’s fast stallion.

Chapter 15

They galloped without rest, remounted often, tangled their tracks, rode at nights, avoided villages and hamlets, hid at the sight of people on the road. Even the most peaceful travelers have long tongues. Those are the most dangerous weapon now. Many would remember a formidable knight in gleaming armor, with a lance in right hand and a triangle knightly shield on his left elbow, with strange sigil: a sword and a lyre on starry field. Oleg, in his wolfskin jack, with wooden beads on bare chest, was memorable as well. They would also spot his bright green eyes, so unusual in this land of dark-eyed people.

Once Thomas couldn’t help saying pleadingly, “Sir wonderer, would you finger your wooden Pagan things more often? What’s waiting for us?”

Oleg glanced at him slantwise with a puzzled green eye and smirked. “But they are Pagan! Isn’t your faith against it?”

Thomas fidgeted in the saddle for a while. “When I led a party of knights across the desert, I had a Saracen scout,” he replied with displeasure but with dignity as well. “The information he brought was always accurate. I’d have to be a fool to refuse his help! Faith is one thing and life is another, sir wonderer.”

For a long time they rode in silence, too tired to talk. In the evening, after their horses were unsaddled and tethered and the two of them lay down after a sup, Thomas asked, “And those… Secret Seven? Can they finger charms in the same way? See us, guess our destination, know what we are doing?”

After a pause, Oleg told him with no confidence, “We are completely different. They rely mostly on accurate calculations. Civilization and progress! But in this world, bare calculation is not enough. Neither is bare civilization without culture.”

“And what enables you to see the future?”

“Intuition,” Oleg replied reluctantly. “Sometimes it fails, but in general it allows to see farther, gives clearer and brighter images. Intuition, Sir Thomas, relies on no knowledge but understanding. And understanding is the core element of culture…”

Thomas said nothing: he sniffed quietly, fast asleep, as a dead-tired healthy man with a clear conscience. The last thought remained in Oleg’s mind. At the damp dawn, when they lay wrapping themselves up in blankets, he called, “Sir Thomas, are you awake?.. Please resolve my perplexity. Why doesn’t the Holy Grail blaze up in your hands? In my wild land, I heard this cup can only be touched by sinless hands. But I look at you, Sir Thomas, and wonder: do you have no sin at all? Your superstitions… your commandments, I mean, say man is born sinful!”

Thomas squirmed under his blanket, waking up and trying to get himself warm. Finally, he got out with a twitch of shoulders, as delicate white as a woman’s. “Brrr! We have warmer nights and this is called a hot desert!.. I think the least sinful man is implied to be sinless. Searching for a completely sinless one means to hang… or at least to thrash all the mankind!”

“Hmm… You think the Holy Grail had been grabbed by so many sinful hands that it lost sensitivity?”

“I’m afraid it had, sir wonderer. It was forced to bring its requirements down, wasn’t it?”

Oleg took some cold slices of meat wrapped in wide leaves of medicinal herbs out of his bag. “Move closer. Are you the most sinless of all Franks, including kings, emperors, and other leaders of the Crusade?”

“Only Sir God is sinless!”

“But others are more sinful than you?”

“The Holy Grail thinks so,” Thomas replied modestly. “Who I am to dispute it?”

They rode all the day long. By night, their horses could barely drag their hooves along. Oleg allowed them a whole day and night of rest. After he’d gathered the brushwood and shot a hare, he only lay by the fire, looking dreamily in the sky. “Do you smell the rhododendron?”

Thomas glanced with suspicion. “Yes, I do. I have a nose,” he grunted but sniffed, just in case, and winced aristocratically. “Rhodode… Ugh! I thought it was bloody Sir Ogden again!”

“What’s the matter with him?” Oleg wondered.

“He often has indigestion. And the smell…”

Oleg looked around. “Isn’t your Sir Ogden in Britain?”

“The wind is from there,” Thomas dismissed with great negligence. He tossed more twigs into the fire, then Oleg heard a thundering sound nearby: the iron knight finally lay down to rest. “I like to look into the fire,” he said dreamily. “All our life is like the flames…”

“Why is it?” Oleg asked with interest.

“Why should I know?” Thomas wondered. “Am I a philosopher?”

In the morning, Oleg told him they had to ride into a village to buy some oats. Besides, they had no more salt and bread: the last slice had been eaten two days before, Since that, they lived on meat only.

The village blacksmith examined the hooves of their horses and reshod one remount. By the way, he gave a solemn warning, “You’d better turn until it’s too late. The way to the right is across mountains, to the left — across deserts. For any of them, you’ll have to leave horses. But if you barge straight forward, it’s sure death! The land of invisible warriors there. Evil and merciless, them allow no strangers at all. Destroy and sacrifice any foreigner.”

The knight glanced askew at the bluish mountain peaks far to his right, shivered. “I’ve crossed mountains once. I still wake up shouting when I dream of it!”

“You’ve also crossed deserts,” Oleg added in a droopy voice. “The hosts of Baldin the Third perished there: not of foe’s sabers but of heat and thirst… What’s special about those warriors?”

“Them invincible. Practice martial arts for lifetime. Know many secrets. Should such a warrior fight ten enemies at once, he leaves ten corpses in the field and goes without a scratch!”

Oleg saw undisguised fear in the knight’s blue eyes. “That is beyond even Sir Lancelot of the Lake… And Sir Galahad too, and Sir Gawain even less so… My God! Why do they need that martial skill? Are they at war?”

The smith shrugged. His eyes were sympathetic. “Them took no side in Crusade. Them would only fight each other, the strongest ones survive. Their monastery high in the mountains… For thousands of years, its monks invented special ways of fight.”

“Monks?” Thomas said indignantly. “Shouldn’t they compete in holiness?”

The smith cast a sharp glance, mocking and sympathetic at once, at the knight. “Our faith is young, theirs old. Them have own rites. Them do no plowing, no reaping, no sowing — only jump and scream with arms. From dawn till dark.”

Thomas shuddered. “This is the way to train a hare to defeat a wolf. Every day from dawn till dark, year after year… Brrr!.. And the desert… how broad is it?”

“Just a week journey. On fast camels.”

Thomas glanced slantwise at their exhausted horses. “Which way would we take, sir wonderer?” he asked hopefully. “What do your gods tell you?”

“And yours?”

“Mine… high and inspired they are! They set the world going. And yours are simpler. They have better knowledge of mundane life.”

“Our gods teach us to take straight roads. I don’t think Christ would object to it either. Let’s strengthen our souls and ride straight!”

Thomas’s face darkened, he fell silent for a long time. Finally, he put his palm down on the bag where a side of the cup was shown through. “You are right, sir,” he told Oleg with a heavy sigh. “We should pick straight ways, and the Holy Virgin will not leave us till our death hour!”

They spent a night at the hospitable smith’s place, rode out on the road at dawn. Thomas frowned, checked the easiness of drawing the sword out more frequently than he did usually, flinched at every rustle. Oleg hung the quiver with arrows on his back, though in the hot air it started to sore straight away, nasty trickles of sweat ran down to his waist. He kept the bow string on. Thomas needed no words to understand that the wonderer was anxious and alerted. “We’ll cope,” Thomas said in a loud but shaky voice. “The Holy Virgin never leaves her faithful knights!”

The wonderer hemmed. “I wanted to ask you this question long ago…” he said loudly. “Why do you swear on the Virgin? I thought your main gods are Christ and his Father whose name I forgot, and the Holy Spirit whose name I can’t recall either — followed by Nicholas, Michael, Gabriel, George… And the Holy Virgin — what sort of patron can she make? A young woman with a babe in arms!”

Thomas shot a fiery glance at him, snuffled. “Men can defend themselves, and Virgin Mary has a need of defenders! That’s why we, noble knights, are the warriors of hers!”

“Er… Is it you protecting her?”

Thomas winced. Usually, he would avoid discussing divine matters with that Pagan, but now, being put in a spot, he decided to counterattack. “And why do your Slavs who turned into the faith of Christ swear on some Saint Nicholas? He’s no main god either! Your Slavic princes, I’ve seen many of them in the Crusade, had Saint Nicholas, not Christ on their banners! And I’ve heard Slavic warriors talking that when the God of Christians dies their Saint Nicholas will take his throne! What did they mean?”

Oleg shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m the sorcerer of Old Faith.”

“A Pagan!”

“An Old Believer,” Oleg corrected. “A Rodian!”

“The new always wins! No way to stop it.”

“The old is replaced by new, according to Rod’s decree, every six hundred years. Six centuries after Rod was born, the White God came into this world, followed, after six more centuries, by Targitai, then by Zarathustra, then by Gautama also known as Buddha, just in case you didn’t know… Six centuries after Buddha, your Christ was born. But he’s not the last one! Six centuries after him, a new prophet came into the world.”[12]

Thomas recoiled, spat with disgust. “He’s no prophet to me.”

“Why?”

“Everything was said by Jesus. Nothing to be added.”

“Really? I kindly advise you to read Koran before you argue on it. If the new is always the better, then you should adopt the faith of Mahomet without reading Koran at all. And if it isn’t, then you shouldn’t attack Old Believers. Even less so, as you are Angle! I’ve spotted that Saxes and Angles revere their ancestors and traditions. You have so much love for antiquity that after you’ve destroyed the ancient Britons, you keep calling the captured land Britain!”

“Not all of us,” Thomas replied with displeasure. “Some fools try to call it Saxony… Though this way it gets confused with the old Saxony where we once came from. Also, it is called Anglo-Saxony…”

“Maybe you should call it just Anglia?”

“It would be unfair,” Thomas objected but smiled contentedly. “Saxons had landed on this new island too, and their number was not smaller than ours.”

“What did you see to be fair?” Oleg wondered. “Scythians perished a thousand years ago but we are still called Scythes! And our Slavic lands are named Great Scythia!”

The next day, their road came to the bank of a broad river. They saw some boats, both fisher and merchant ones, far away but the crowd on the wide log mooring was waiting for a ferry, which, enormous and slow, was crawling along the cable from the other bank.

Thomas looked across the river with glassy eyes. Far away there, almost at the horizon, the yellow walls of a strange fortress could be seen, well-lit by the morning sun. Oleg nudged a small hook-nosed man who looked like a gaunt mournful bird. “Whose castle is it?”

The man gave him a strange look, moved away carefully. His neighbor, swarthy and hook-nosed the same, cast an apprehensive glance around. “I see you are Frank,” he said in a warning tone. “Mind you not say that in presence of monks. It’s no castle but holy monastery! A cloister to warrior monks.”

“A cloister? Do they come out of it?”

“Their duty is to wander by roads and preach good. And since most roads are dangerous, monks are taught to fight so that any of them can defeat ten villains armed to their teeth! With his bare hands, surely.”

“And if… not bare?”

The hook-nosed man shook his head. “Armed?.. Well, only gods may withstand then! Or they may not…”

The ferry crept up to the mooring, pushed against it with iron-bound logs: the travelers felt a quiver beneath their feet. Two ferryman jumped on the mooring, tied sturdy ropes, threw a wide wooden gangplank across. The crowd began to flow onto the ferry.

A sullen ferryman was leaning on the rope to have some rest. He gave a surprised look to Oleg and the knight in gleaming armor, as they led their horses upon the wooden planks of the ferry. “Franks? Where to? Monks don’t like strangers.”

Thomas gulped down, his voice suddenly got hoarse. “We only need a passage across these lands! We have own food and oats. We won’t offend or disturb anyone. We are no enemies!”

The ferryman spat into the yellow water bursting noisily from beneath the ferry, turned away. “If you tired of wearing your heads…”

Some carts had their wheels coupled on the gangplank. The ferryman bellowed, his helpers dashed there with raised poles, thrashed both horses and their masters. Soon the matter was settled down, the carts pulled apart and placed properly.

Several scores of hands seized the rope, helping to move the ferry. Thomas and Oleg stood aside with their horses. From time to time, Thomas felt the cup through the bag and shot suspicious glances around.

The river lapped on the ferry, spraying it with water. Thomas pulled a long face, his eyes turned scared. Oleg followed his eyes to a poorly clad villager. “I saw myself,” he told other men, waving his hands. “Them tried stop him on road, with spear heads advanced, sharp an’ gleaming. He tore shirt in rage, barged on them with bare chest! An’ them set spears on him, one on his very throat, but no scratch on him! He went an’ thought o’ the High, and spears bent…”

“Five?” one of the listeners asked with a flash of interest. “I saw three of ‘em bend.”

“All five of ‘em!” the storyteller swore it with such pride as if it were his chest blunting the needle-sharp spearheads. “But them brave, seasoned warriors! No one dropped spear until it bent like yoke… an’ pulled out sharp swords! But what sword against a monk martial art?” His listeners shrugged. Thomas’s face was going more and more miserable. “He laid all five of ‘em. Faster than one of us claps hands!”

Oleg saw Thomas moving his iron palms apart and together quickly. The knight went pallid, with dark circles under his eyes. He was fingering the cup anxiously through the thick leather of the bag.

“All five of ‘em dead,” the storyteller specified. “Each at just one touch!” The rest nodded silently, their thoughts written clearly on their faces. It’s clear he only hit once, that’s how the masters of fisticuffs do. Who would bother a second strike if the first one is enough to send anyone flying into the dust, with their necks and spines broken?

The gloomy bank was approaching fast. The men started to stir, to elbow their way to the border, striving to be the first walker off. The ferryman’s helpers pushed them away, swearing. The ferry hit heavily against the thick logs. The two lads jumped on the mooring, fastened the ropes quickly to fix the ferry, covered the slit with the trampled gangplank. The crowd streamed ashore after them: hurrying, elbowing, pushing the ferrymen aside.

Oleg and Thomas waited until everyone, including the carts, got off the ferry, then led their horses onto the wooden mooring, mounted with an air of doom. The crowd broke apart, heading to the left and to the right — and they drove their horses straight ahead, where the yellow-walled cloister of warrior monks could be seen over distant hills.

On the way, they met strange oxcarts: with huge wheels, higher than their wooden sides, loaded with firewood and hays of fragrant stack, pulled by strange furry bulls, which were called yaks there. The villagers, dozy on the stacks, glanced at the knight in his gleaming steel with slack interest and gave the tanned barbarian in his wolfskin jack only a brief once-over: everyone had own business to mind, and the knight and the barbarian rode without a stop, severe and frowning.

At the road turn, Thomas reined up. The walls of the monastery towered in half a mile ahead. Some green branches and bunches of grass were dried on its flat roofs. The road went past the gate. No way to turn off: a scatter of stones on the right will break the legs of horses. On the left, there’s a crop field, but we are not in Britain to ride across a field that belongs to others.

Over the monastery roofs, yellow banners with grinning dragons, lions, and tigers quivered at the light breeze. A two-wheeled oxcart rolled through the distant gate, the drowsy driver urging his slow-paced yaks on. The gate was flanked by men in long orange robes. They stood motionless, their clean-shaven heads gleaming at the sunshine.

Oleg made a move to ride on, but Thomas stopped him with his arm stretched. “Just look what they do!”

From the top of the hill where they stood, they had a good view of the green field behind the monastery wall. Three scores of men in the same clothing jumped, somersaulted, brandished long poles. The tall wall around prevented any stranger from spotting their fighting ways from a close distance. and from the hill, one could barely make out their tiny figures. A monk, definitely one of those great warriors of whom that man on the ferry spoke with terror and awe, jumped up to a stout tree, started thrashing it with his bare hands. Pieces of bark flew sideways.

Thomas breathed out with a heavy groan, his stallion trotted down along the road sadly. Oleg moved his shoulders to adjust the quiver. Thomas rode with no look back, straightened and staring ahead. The monastery approached slowly. Its walls kept being seen as a whole, instead of breaking apart into huge stone slabs, and Oleg realized they were made of yellow clay mixed with straw.

Their horses were in half a hundred steps from the gate when a score and a half of men came out of it to block their way: all shave-headed, in the same orange robes, all sturdy, lean, and muscular. All the monks were much smaller than Oleg and Thomas but sinewy, and their posture and accurate moves could only belong to skilled fighters.

The monk who stood in the middle raised his hand imperatively. Thomas and Oleg pulled up. Thomas checked anxiously whether the sword hilt was in place, his fingers tightened their grip on the lance, his left elbow with a shield on it moved slightly to cover half of his breast.

“Stop!” the senior monk cried in a thin, clear voice, which would have sounded childish if not the ringing of metal in it. “Who are you?”

“Sir Thomas Malton of Gisland,” Thomas replied, trying to keep his voice firm. “Coming home after the triumphant conquer of the Holy Land. This is Oleg, a peaceful pilgrim. He comes from the land of Hyperborean, also known as the Great Scythia.”

“Why are you crossing our lands?”

“It’s the shortest way,” Thomas explained. He cast a warning look at the wonderer. “The host marched around your country in a wide arc, but we know that no harm is to come from two peaceful riders!”

The senior monk watched them suspiciously. “Peaceful? Why do you have a lance and a long sword then? And your companion, a peaceful pilgrim, has a battle bow and arrows!”

“The roads are dangerous. Villains, robbers, night murderers…”

The monk glanced back at his silent companions. “If you tried to cross our lands without arms, you’d have a chance. Though a little one… We tolerate no strangers. And kill they who come armed.” He sounded stern and dooming. Other monks did not stir, but their muscles bulged and stiffened. “You’ll have to fight!” the senior monk said with a malevolent smirk.

Thomas glanced back at the silent wonderer. “We’d rather not fight…” the knight begged. His voice gave a quaver.

Ghosts of smiles appeared on the still faces of monks. “If you win — ride on!” the senior said coldly. “If you lose…” His slanting eyes glittered coldly, his face remained stony.

A sturdy, sinewy monk stepped out of the line. He joined his palms by his breast, made a low bow. Thomas tilted his lance slightly: every man of civilization should respond to a greeting, and a man of culture all the more. Oleg pressed his palm against his heart in reply, bowed his head.

The monk made a swift move with arms, took a strange fighting stance.

Chapter 16

“He calls for fisticuffs!” Oleg realized. He started to dismount reluctantly, groaning.

“May I do it?” Thomas suggested, with a quaver in his voice.

“You need half a day to take your steel off.” Oleg dropped the reins on the saddle, spat loudly on his palms, took his stand against the fighter. While high in the saddle, he had spotted something strange about the whole line of shavepates. Now that he dismounted, he grasped that the sinewy monk’s head, with his face of a skillful and ruthless fist fighter, was on a level with his breast. The monk’s thin arms with tiny fists looked like switches.

With a terrible shriek, the monk dashed forward. Oleg stepped back involuntarily under the hail of his blows, shielded with arms in fright: it was like being attacked by a furious she-cat in a dark barn, as he once was when he’d bothered her kittens. He heard guttural cries of monks, then Thomas yelling. Oleg waved away once and again, each time hitting the thin air. The yellow robe flickered before his eyes, then he felt a hard blow on lips, pain and salty taste in the mouth. He roared with fury, his fists began to move faster, but he missed every time, punching the air, while the monk wriggled around like a loach, showering him with swift frequent blows from all sides. Oleg stopped backing, stood in place for a while, his fists darted forward menacingly, as he targeted the monk’s concentrated face that glistened with big beads of sweat.

Suddenly the monk flew up, gave out such a terrible shriek as if he got under a loaded oxcart, and hit Oleg’s breast with both feet. Oleg lurched, made a step back to keep his balance, waved his hand and gripped the falling monk by ankle. The adversary had bent, ready to somersault, but now, being caught by leg, he struck against the ground forcefully with his face, choked with nasty fine dust.

Oleg still held the foe’s ankle, guessing what to do now, when the monk thrashed in his arms, hit his breast with the other heel and squeaked with pain, then hit lower but the wonderer’s belly was not much softer, so the monk squeaked again, arched his back like a cat, gripped Oleg’s hand with both of his, digging his nails deep into flesh. Oleg’s fingers unclenched hurriedly, jerked his hand away. The monk fell down but jumped up at once, as if his bottom were pierced with an awl. Standing with his back to Oleg, he started raising his leg for a sider, but Oleg got cross and kicked him forcefully below his back.

The monk was sent flying. He collapsed into the dust in several steps and remained there, sprawled like a frog squashed by a wheel. “He shouldn’t have scratched me!” Oleg said loudly, as an excuse for himself. “He could bite me either… Though I’d have knocked all his teeth out then!”

Thomas looked at Oleg with goggled eyes. The senior monk came out of stupor and whispered — not bellowed! — a few words. Two monks dashed to their fallen comrade. Oleg watched, with compassion and concern, the injured man to be turned on his back. His arms were pulled apart, the air was blown into his mouth. At last, one of the monks cried something in a high-pitched, bird-like voice, the senior monk cast a sharp glance at Oleg, and the defeated fighter was carried at a run into the open gate.

Two monks, whose solemn faces seemed to be carved of dark stone, stepped forward. One winced malevolently, shot a fierce glance at Oleg. Another gave a terrible scream and shivered, as if in some dashing dance, his face contorted, sinews in his neck bulged like a spinal comb of a big lizard. The senior monk looked them over approvingly. “Which would you like?” he asked Oleg harshly.

“To fight, you mean?”

“To combat.”

“Well, to make it fair… Both.”

The senior monk’s eyebrows jerked up. “The two of them?” he repeated slowly, unable to believe his ears. “At the same time?”

“What’s wrong?” Oleg wondered in turn. “If no mortal combat, why not to have some fun? When I was young, we fought face-offs in groups…”

The monks started coming to him from both sides. Oleg stepped away from one, but missed the stroke of another who flew up like a hellish bat, bared his teeth, raised his hand but struck with foot: so high that the bare heel hit Oleg’s head. Oleg spat with vexation for being tricked like that. He moved to grip his ankle, as he did with the previous combatant, but failed. Meanwhile, the first monk took a running jump from the left. The violent kick of both his feet on the neck almost knocked Oleg down. He turned, raising his fist for a mighty blow, but both monks whisked under his arms and began to pound his back with fists, elbows, feet, even heads. Once Oleg wheeled round, like angered bear, both warrior monks slipped to behind him again, knocked on his back like on a wall of logs, screaming in high-pitched voices, hitting with their heads. At least they neither bite nor scratch.

After a fifth or sixth attempt, Oleg managed to snatch one of them blindly. It turned out to be his head, so Oleg took care not to squeeze it, got a better grip on his leg, whirled the monk overhead and rushed after the other one. The adversary ran away from him in circles, screaming desperately. Oleg chased him as if he were a naughty kitten, brandishing the first warrior monk overhead, roaring with joy.

Finally, the fighter stumbled, fell into the dust, shielded his head with both arms in wild fear, then pulled the hem of his robe over. “I see you give up,” Oleg understood. He took his “weapon” with both hands and laid him down on a dusty road near his brother. “Live on, lad!”

The monk whom Oleg intended to use as a club, though landed no blow with him, lay with his eyes goggled as a lobster’s. His face and neck were horrible crimson, filled with bad blood. The veins on his temples bulged in tight branchy knots.

The monks were backing in horror. Their even line broke, their goggle-eyed gazes shifted between their sprawled brothers and the smirking giant barbarian. The senior monk glanced back at his monastery walls in confusion, as if he expected some help from there. “Give me two more of yours!” Oleg suggested. “Or come with them yourself. I’ve only started to warm up. We Slavs are a nation of north, we harness slowly… It’s been ages since I romped in fisticuffs. I see no harm in pleasing myself and our gods with them!”

The senior monk glanced at Oleg and Thomas angrily, spat out few words in a high-pitched voice, like a street fishwife. One of the monks darted into the gate, the sprawled brothers were carried after him. Behind the wall, there were shouts and horse neighs.

Three warriors, in yellow jackets and strange straw hats, which looked like caps of mushrooms, with red tassels, ran out of the gate briskly. Each had a short spear in clenched fist and a thin curved saber on his belt.

“Serious guys,” Oleg admitted. He backed to his horse, where his bow and quiver lay across the saddle and his giant sword hung beside it.

Thomas drove his horse ahead, blocking the way. “Sir wonderer,” he said solemnly, “it’s a shame for me to hide behind a peaceful back of a holy hermit. I’m a noble knight after all, a professional fighter for justice. Please let me warm up now. You need time to take your sword, and I have mine in hand!”

Thomas dismounted heavily, walked ahead slowly, stopped before the three warrior monks. He looked like a glittering tower of metal, his armor gleaming so bright that it was painful to look at. Slowly, Thomas lowered his visor, unsheathed the sword. The sunlight scattered blue sparkles over the double-edged blade of Damask steel.

The senior monk backed, with his head tossed and mouth open. At last, he came to his senses, spoke in a shaky voice, “Which of my warriors will you fight, Frank?”

Thomas had spotted the weakest, in his view, one among them but looked back at Oleg, suppressed a sigh of grief and replied as haughtily as he could, “Would I, Sir Thomas Malton of Gisland, select one when my humble friend, who wouldn’t harm a fly, did fight two? Surely, I’ll fight all three.”

The senior monk wheeled round to the three warriors of his. They breathed fast, their arms quivered with strain. In that silence, one could all but hear the creak of their extremely tensed muscle. The three of them had their eyes fixed on the gleaming knight, the heads of their spears aimed at his breast.

Thomas looked back at his huge warhorse. His giant lance, as thick as a young tree, remained across the saddle, but he only waved his hand. “Dear sirs! I beg you to start with the arms we have. My lance is more fitting for a knightly joust.”

The senior monk uttered a desperate shriek, the three brave fighters rushed forward. Thomas had barely tightened his grip on the sword hilt when three spears hit his chest. He felt a violent push, white wooden chips flew up before his eyes. One of the warrior monks who came running hit the knight’s steel breast with own head. He gasped, fell down to Thomas’s feet. The rest two staggered away, their eyes malevolent and confused. The ground before the knight was strewn by splinters of broken spears. One of the monks was shaking his blooded hand.

Thomas stooped, slapped the unconscious monk sympathetically on the back of his head. “Dear sir! Get up, it’s all over.”

“A well-nursed child utters no scream!” Oleg cried out. “Don’t hit on head! You have your gauntlet on, and his head is as large as mine… er… fist.”

“I didn’t hit,” Thomas muttered in fright and took his hand away hastily. “I patted him, for Christ wanted us to love even our foes… And this one’s no foe indeed. Dear sir herald! Please call new fighters. These ones got tired, I see.”

The senior monk screeched in despair, tore his hat off, trampled on it fiercely, as if it were a jumping viper. His goggled eyes looked like owl’s, then they got bloodshot. His thin lips dropped foam. He kept glancing back at the gate impatiently. His face lit up when three more warriors ran out.

With spears at the ready and such terrible screams as if some parts of them were pinched in the door, they dashed on Thomas, their legs moved swiftly. The knight gripped his sword — and was late again. A spear hit him straight in the face, hooked his visor, two others broke on his chest. The triple blow was so crushing that Thomas couldn’t help reeling back. He even made a small step back but, as his frightened glance fell on the wonderer who watched the fight very closely, Thomas stepped forward with haste.

Two monks were staggering back, their hands pressed to their smashed, bleeding faces. The third one lay at Thomas’s feet: his arms spread out wide, his squashed nose and slashed eyebrow bleeding heavily.

Groaning with vexation, Thomas pulled out the spearhead stuck in the visor, twisted it about in his steel fingers, with disgust for the low quality of iron, and flung away. “These tired too,” he spoke loudly to no one in particular. “Can’t fight but fall asleep, like fish ashore.”

“Too nimble they are, like mice!” Oleg said with concern. “And you only gape your jaws, scratch yourself, and keep harnessing… Are you a Slav?[13] Fight, or they’ll smash their heads before you get ready, stuffed iron dummy!”

“Before I get ready?” Thomas got surprised. He looked around nervously. “I am ready! I’m shaking in my shoes as I wait for them to start using their martial arts… And all I get is their pre-fight rites!”

“Which rites?” Oleg didn’t get it.

“Pre-fight,” Thomas said again. “The ones before fight. Breaking their twigs, hitting their foreheads… I’m tired of trembling and waiting for their famous fighters to show up!”

The men with small wounds were taken by arms and led away, the motionless one carried after them. A new score of warrior monks ran out, armed with poles, spears, and sabers. Some even had strange flails: the likes of those were used in Russian villages to thresh the sheaves of wheat. The monks stopped at the gate, talking to each other in shrill chirping voices. Like a big flock of small forest birds, Oleg thought. One was sent by senior monk back to the monastery. Seems he was told to deliver a message and be back in a flash.

Oleg came to his horse, pulled the sword out, turned his face to the monks. Thomas stood in two steps, casting jealous glances, as he compared the length of their weapons. The wonderer’s sword did not look shorter, though Thomas’s one was the longest in all the crusader army. Moreover, Oleg’s sword was obviously heavier, as its blade was half as broad again as Thomas’s. The senior monk, as the knight had spotted, couldn’t take his eyes off the wonderer’s blade sparkling with bluish lights. However, he gazed at Thomas’s huge sword, as long as any of monkish spears, in the same way. Like a rabbit enchanted by a cobra.

That time no one came running out of the gate, screaming, jumping, and swaying a thin rite spear in complicated ways. They heard a bass gong in the monastery. A very old monk appeared in the gate, clad in a sumptuous oriental robe embroidered with gold and a multistoried hat with little bells and ribbons. The staff in his hand was decorated with silver, its knob was shaped as a head of furious dragon.

“That must be a senior sorcerer,” Thomas said quietly.

“An abbot,” Oleg objected in whisper. “Or even a bishop!”

Thomas snuffled indignantly but, out of respect, said nothing. The local sorcerer (or bishop) looked the battlefield over from beneath his senile swollen eyelids, advanced his trembling hands. Monks came running from both sides to support his stretched arms respectfully.

“Who are you, strangers?” the dressed-up sorcerer or bishop (or maybe an abbot) asked.

“Pilgrims,” Thomas replied respectfully. “We ride in no hurry from the Holy Land, bother and offend no one… You see, the monks of your monastery have greeted us by a strange rite, but even sir wonderer, though a Pagan, knows: when in monastery, do as monks do. In some places a guest must wipe his feet, while in others he must not…”

“I’m a preceptor of this famous monastery,” the old man said in a rasping voice. “Here we study the martial art of mao shui, the best in the world. We revere great heroes, even the wandering ones, and invite you to honor the ancient walls of our wonderful monastery that has the only true rules with your visit.”

“Well… we are not quite great heroes,” Thomas mumbled with a stunned look.

Oleg slapped loudly on the knight’s metal shoulder. “Let’s go, or no seed will remain of these men. They lay themselves out just to show their hospitality!”

On an open porch, there was a table of polished walnut set for them and mats to sit on. Oleg managed to seat himself, with his legs crossed in the way he had learnt from Saracen (though it made his joints crunch as snow), while poor Thomas tried to settle himself this way and that and ended pulling his breastplate off fiercely. His body was warmed, Oleg smelled at once that the noble knight hadn’t washed it for a long time. Thomas sat down on his iron armor, put his glittering helmet on the floor besides. His hair, the color of reap wheat, poured over his shoulders, lighting the walls with golden shine.

Glancing at each other across the table, they snatched quails roasted in dried white breadcrumbs and stuffed with nuts and lard. The birds were so juicy and tender that Thomas gobbled them down with bones. The peacocks, partridges, and starlings cooked skillfully on spits were even more tender, and those baked on griddles were just melting in the mouth. Thomas barely had time to squeeze big walnuts and small hazelnuts in his strong teeth before they were served a new course on huge plates: ham seasoned with Eastern spices, set densely with whole nuts, sprinkled with crumbled nuts and shredded fragrant grass.

A large plate with a pile of smoked sausages was placed in front of Oleg. They were so thin and red that he mistook them for earthworms and moved the plate away with disgust. Thomas seized it at once with both hands, dragged closer. He must have known this course, as he had lived among Saracens, or guessed it.

However, Thomas was the first to get full. He loosened his belt, started to pant, and ended leaning back from the table and looking with envy at the wonderer who, staying perfectly calm, gulped down lots of roast birds, baked fish seasoned with a sour sauce, fine shreds of young venison sinking in big juicy berries, then fruits, berries, and meat again: roast, baked, dried, and smoked… Finally, Thomas couldn’t help saying venomously, “Hermits feed on honey and locusts! And you, valiant sir wonderer, are eating up the second boar!”

“When in monastery, do as monks do. You said it. So eat what you are given, don’t be squeamish.”

“Would you have preferred locusts?”

“With honey,” Oleg reminded modestly. “But now I’m out of small reclusion, did you forget? And in the Great Reclusion, I lead the same life as others. No standing out, no excelling.”

Thomas said nothing but his blue eyes spoke out clearly how non-excelling the wonderer was while setting to the third boar, washing it down with falls of heady drinks and barley beer, eating lots of boiled crabs after, guzzling jugs of red wine dry. Without batting an eyelid, he gobbled fat spotted snakes and frogs and jelly-like oysters, which Thomas was afraid even to look at: his face went green and his body spotty, making him look like those frogs and pythons.

Down in the yard, monks were training tirelessly. Young and old men, all in the same orange robes, jumped, somersaulted, fought with poles and wooden swords. Oleg feasted his eyes upon a separate group who swung wooden flails. He had often seen village boys fighting with flails, but the monks did wonders with those. Their flails are much lighter and shorter, however, but one should mind they are small people. These fellows might fail even to raise a Slavic flail, but brandish easily the lighter ones of theirs, called nunchaku, shift them between hands swiftly, whirl over heads…

In the far corner of the garden, the strongest monks (or the most skillful ones, Oleg and Thomas did not know exactly) had their practice. Anyway, there was a crowd of gapers around: gasping, squeaking, crouching with awe. One of the skillful (or strong) would break two boulders, one topped on another, with the edge of his palm, the second — a thick stick with a terrible blow of his fist, and the third, with his muscle bulging fiercely, would tie an iron rod, as thick as a rake, in a bundle. After he had a rest, he would bend or tie the next one.

“Monks?” Thomas said with disapproval. “They are Pagans who haven’t seen the light of Christ!”

Oleg chopped off a weighty slice of juicy fragrant brisket, salted it, peppered, spiced with mustard, sprinkled nicely with ground roots and shedders of greenery. “But they know good food instead. There are many ways to gods. The way of these robed men is exercise. It’s the same as fast is for you Christians. Fast is the triumph of spirit over base flesh, isn’t it? Here, the same high spirit makes men exercise until they fall like dead. They live in monkhood: no women, no dancing, no wine! They only have exercise instead of praying. And on different ways of serving gods…”

“God,” Thomas corrected with displeasure. “He is single!”

“And angels. archangels, cherubs, seraphs, and so on — aren’t they some smaller gods? Well, I just meant that people on different ways need different food.”

Thomas could not take his eyes off the green garden full of cries, squeals, dry thuds of wooden poles. “Let’s go and have a look?.. I don’t understand many things here.”

“Just many?” Oleg was surprised. “Happy you!” He wiped his mouth with a sleeve, cast a regretful look over the table to which silent monks kept serving food and drinks noiselessly from all around. As befits a hermit who exercised in hunger for years. Thomas was already up his feet, pulling on the breastplate: he made no step without it and neither went to sleep. He also put on the helmet, though visor remained up, and glanced back warily at the huge sword: its polished handle glittered ominously in the corner, together with Oleg’s sword. “We are guests!” the wonderer whispered softly to him. “I don’t think they’ll break the law of hospitality.”

“Laws are different in different lands.”

“This one is common.”

“Even for the guests who broke into?”

Oleg said nothing: he also started to think that fearless monks could not be willing to invite two strangers into their impregnable monastery. His fingers slid reassuringly by the knife hilts on the inner side of his jack.

Thomas saw it. “You shouldn’t have left the bow,” he grumbled.

“It would look strange.”

“You could say that’s a part of your costume. A ritual ornament! Once I’ve rode past a savage tribe whose leader ornamented himself with spoons, tin cups, and pans. Can’t recall the name of that country: it might have been either Rus’ or Ethiopia…”

As they approached the garden, the cracks, thuds, and battle cries grew louder. Down at the last stair, the prior sat on a small bench. A sullen monk, strong in shoulders, stood motionless behind him. Both had beautiful staffs in hands: gilded, gleaming, decorated with elaborate carving, little bells, bright feathers. Both kept their eyes on the excercising monks. Sometimes the standing monk would cry out a command, and the ones in the garden would speed up at once. Both observers glanced back in fright, as they heard the metallic thunder of Thomas’s steps. The monk helped the old man up his feet, both bowed to their guests from the waist.

The knight bowed in return with effort, as Oleg did. The small of Thomas’s back grinded. The monks gave a new, even more polite bow. Thomas and Oleg replied with the same. Oleg heard a squeezed protesting sob in his stomach. “Strange rites can be a burden!” Thomas said through gritted teeth.

“Not for everyone,” Oleg replied, but looked with compassion at the iron plates on the small of knight’s back, as they came over each other, rasping, rubbing the rust away.

“Who knows how much bows remain,” Thomas whispered. “Which is their sacred number?”

“It’s often three,” Oleg replied after thinking for a while. “Three epic heroes, three heads of a dragon, three sons… But, on the other hand, a house has four corners, a horse has four legs… er… to stumble. The Secret Seven vowed to raise their five-pointed star over all the world, to put it even on the towers of our Moscow Kremlin…[14] and David, whose tower you took by storm, had a star of six points. But seven is considered a magic number in all the world, since the times of Chaldean and Urjupin…”

Thomas groaned, straightened up with effort and stopped bowing. The prior and the monk also stiffened in a polite half-bow. “We sent the fastest rider for Libryuk and Chaknor,” the old man said in a rasping voice. “They are the greatest warriors of our land. They’ll come at night, so next morning you’ll have an opportunity to fight them!”

Thomas froze as if he got ice-bound. Oleg gulped down a lump in his throat. “One thing on top…” he said politely. “Why two of them? One would do. The good sire dreams of battles, jousts, and combats. There’s nothing, even your bread and wine, he likes more than fighting!”

“And you, a great hero of Hyperborean?” the monastic elder asked warily.

“I live up to other monastic rules. Good meal and good sleep, that’s all I need.”

“A very interesting monastery,” the prior said thoughtfully. “I’d like to go there on pilgrimage.”

Thomas stepped down from the stone stairs, strolled across the garden. He left a trace of deep footprints, like a walking iron statue. The excercising monks started to glance back. A stir spread upon their rows until all of them stopped, stiffened with respectful attention, then started bowing altogether. Thomas sniffed with displeasure, bowed his head with a great effort, his armor gave a rasp. The local strongmen gave an even lower bow eagerly. Thomas grasped there would be no end to that and pretended to see nothing. He turned to the stairs where the prior and his assistant remained. “Is it really difficult?”

The monastic elder got up with the monk’s help, crossed the garden slowly and poignantly. He stopped in two steps from Thomas and ringed out, “Would you break the brick? To do it, one needs to please our gods. Besides, our fighters exercise in it from dawn till dusk! A year after year…”

Thoughtful, Thomas turned to the group of fighters. They stood with their sleeves rolled up to elbows, all sweaty and powdered with the red dust of crushed boulders. A red pile of bricks was seen aside, and one boulder lay prepared on a huge granite block that had sank by a third into the ground under own weight.

Thomas tapped on the boulder with a finger, heard a dry ringing sound. He looked around, as though expecting a catch in it, his eyes full of fear and agonizing hesitation. One of the monks caught his sight, put one more red stone eagerly on the top of the boulder. Thomas bowed his head slowly and bent a finger. The monk raised his eyebrows but added the third boulder obediently. Thomas thought for a while, ordered by gesture to lay one more. The monk hesitated, looked around those present. His eyes were astonished and frightened, but he put a stone on and retreated hastily into the crowd.

Oleg walked around the granite block, examined the pile of stones thoroughly, slid his finger over the red crumbs. “Want to break it?”

“Well, it’s important to them for some reason…”

“Do it,” Oleg approved. “The thing is not ours to take care of.”

Thomas raised his hand, aimed, and struck with force. A terrible crash, a flash of long white sparks, a smell of burning — and he stood in a thick red cloud of brick dust setting down slowly. The boulder had broken in two pieces that lay in front of him, each driven into the ground almost by half. There was a strong smell of burning and something more scary. Everything was yellow around, as if the golden fall came suddenly in the middle of green summer. All the monks, including the elder one, lay on the ground, shielding their heads with arms, covering with a yellow hem of cloak or at least a sleeve.

“Why the slab too?” Oleg grunted.

“Who knew their stones were so fragile…” Thomas muttered, startled.

“No stones here, sir! Just clay. A fired clay! It’s what they call bricks!”

“That’s something,” Thomas drawled with disappointment. “They could make them of sand either… A childish way, I swear on the innocence of Holy Virgin!”

The monks started to stir and rise. Their swarthy faces turned out to be whiter than those of Norwegs, and their narrow eyes opened so wide that the monks gained resemblance to eagle-owls from the woods of Moscow or Gisland. Oleg clapped the knight loudly on his iron back, to take him out of the state of embarrassed rigidity. Both started a walk back to the porch where the table had been changed in their absence, replaced by a broader one. Oleg, with his keen eye, spotted ram side served with porridge, baked turkeys stuffed with garden apples, not to mention various small things, which he decided to sort out immediately.

On the way, they bowed politely to monks who had been hitting, with the edges of their hands, all the day long, a thick log fixed upon heavy boulders. At the moment, the monks were not knocking it with their horny hands but stood stiff, like hamsters near their burrows, goggling at the pilgrims from North.

As Oleg went by, he shook his head, gave a mettlesome hem, struck the log. They heard a terrible crush, wooden splinters flew up and sideways with force. The halves of log thundered down on the ground, only their very ends remained on boulders. The motionless figures of monks had vanished: some fell down, some were thrown away by splinters. Only the strongest ones managed to run aside.

Thomas looked at him with reproach. Oleg shrugged with the air of independence. “It’s rotten. Nibbled by worms.”

“And bark beetles,” Thomas sympathized. “The hot climate drives them mad. They even damage the stone here!”

They looked at each other and smirked, feeling the terrible strain subsiding. They hugged each other by shoulders and went upstairs. In fact, they were dragged on there by the powerful magic of fragrances of the table served.

Chapter 17

They feasted in a proud solitude, save for silent monks who appeared noiselessly from behind strange paper walls, took the empty dishes away, put full ones instead. The new courses smelled even more magical, stupefying.

Thomas had loosened his belt to the very last hole in it and Oleg was slicing a young boar when a thickset, broad-shouldered monk jumped through the window onto the porch. He somersaulted, gave out a terrible screech, which Thomas and Oleg had already got used to, waved his hands abruptly.

Startled, Thomas and Oleg watched him pull some glittering thing from his wide belt, swing his hand swiftly once more, and for the third time…

Thomas heard a thin tinkle against his iron breast. He looked with surprise at the monk who stood pending, then at Oleg who, in turn, shifted his gaze between Thomas and the monk.

Finally, Oleg’s face lit, he nodded at the floor. “It’s iron!” He felt up his chest for a while, then disentangled a gleaming star carefully from the thick wolf hair. The star was made of thick bad iron, its edges sharpened.

With caution, Thomas picked his star (it had smashed like a bug of the hit) up from the floor, twiddled it thoughtfully in his steel palm. Cursing the poor quality of iron, apparently upset, he started to straighten its edges with care, as if they were wings of a rare butterfly.

Looking at the knight, Oleg bent all the five sharp ends inside, to prevent the monk from cutting himself, and threw the star back to him politely. The monk shifted his dumbfounded gaze from the guests to his throwing stars, then gave a high-pitched, pathetic cry, as if his paw or something else was jammed in the door, turned his back to them, took a running jump out through the window, head first.

Thomas followed with eyes the glimpse of his heels, shook his head respectfully. He could not have managed such a jump, with five stones of his armor on and own significant weight and height, but it was easy to monks. Light as cats. You can hurl them from the roof down into the paved yard, and they’ll land on their fours, dust off and run back onto the roof, where other cats squeal at the moon!

Oleg gave a loud sigh. “Each country, each tribe makes own rites… So how can these poor people do without wars?”

“Pagans,” Thomas accused severely. “Christ made the single rite for everyone. Take it and stop fighting.”

“Yes, but until his rites are taken by all the world, keep your weather eye open. Or you may go, by accident, too far before you know it. Mind it: one should not offend people. Even if they are Pagans.”

They finished their meal in silence, feeling anxious. The sun was high, but Oleg looked around and offered to get out of harm’s way into the room allotted for them. Here, behind the closed door, we can rest, sleep, wait for the dawn…

Thomas cast a sharp glance at him. Oleg felt the knight’s thoroughly concealed fear. His own heart felt wrung with iron hand. In the morning, the two mighty warriors will come for us to fight. Now the guests were allowed to rest together with the monastery inhabitants only because the warriors were absent, but by dawn they would be here. Maybe we should try to lead the horses out in the night by stealth and gallop away?

They walked along a broad corridor, halfway to their room, when some rough grey thing burst out suddenly from the narrow slit in the wall. Oleg drew his knife convulsively. The looped rope brushed against him and winded around the knight’s gleaming body at once, in three rows. The fist-sized stone on the end of the rope landed a final bang on the iron belly. Thomas looked stunned. After a while, he realized being tugged, pulled somewhere like a young bull on a tie. He seized the rope with both hands and pulled.

The wooden wall burst with a crush, scattering splinters, dry clots of clay. In the cloud of yellow suffocating dust, Thomas and Oleg saw three monks rolling out to their feet: sinewy and swarthy, half-naked, in strange woman’s skirts. Their eyes, as black as thorn, were blazing on flat decisive faces. The three monks were lean, with no drop of excessive fat. They gripped the rope tightly, one had even winded it round his fist, as large as a baby Angl’s or Slav’s.

Thomas shrugged in perplexity: he still could not grasp the meaning of these rites. With caution, he dropped the rope on the floor, where the stunned monks were lying, and walked round them.

Thomas and Oleg left for the guest room. The monks remained in the heap of splinters and clods for a long while, following them with blurred eyes.

At night, Oleg felt restive. He heard Thomas flinching in his sleep. Sometimes the knight groaned, tossed and thrashed with an awful grit of his teeth. The fragile beds moaned under their bodies, much bigger than those of monks. The night was stiff. Oleg was dripping with sweat. He wanted to get up and wash himself with cold water, but was afraid to get into a scrape: break a taboo or step on a local relic. All tribes are passionate towards their rites, and monasteries even more so. Only a bitter experience could have given birth to the wise rule, “When in Rome, do as Romans do…”

Oleg fell asleep at the daybreak, when the eastern edge of the sky got red, but once a tiny tip of the sun appeared above the horizon, he jumped up as if scalded. Thomas, in his armor, sat by the door. He looked pale and haggard, watched the wonderer with envy. “One can chop wood on you,” he said gloomily. “A clear conscience, isn’t it? But those two fighters we are about to combat don’t mind your soul. To withstand, we need something more than clear conscience!”

“We have it,” Oleg grunted. He dressed up quickly, feeling the knight’s inspecting eye on himself, the eye of professional who could tell at once which muscles were developed by heaving stones, which — by exercise with sword, which — by throwing a spear, and which — by work with battleaxe. Oleg saw doubt in Thomas’s eyes and gave a sullen smirk: the knight was not the first expert to get confused by his muscle.

“What do we have?” Thomas asked skeptically.

“The cup.”

Thomas glanced back in fright, felt the bag with his palm. As his fingers followed the bulging curves tenderly, his stern face softened.

There was a knock at the door. Thomas unsheathed the sword, stood on the left of it. Oleg, with a throwing knife in hand, crossed the room and removed the bar. A monk in pompous clothing was there, standing in the corridor, his face impenetrable, his eyes gleaming with malicious triumph. He gave them a low bow, then made a sweeping gesture. A table on castors appeared from aside, and Oleg’s guts gave an involuntary loud croak. They sat down, loosing their belts and rubbing hands, glancing and winking at each other.

The table was wheeled into the room by a monk. While he shifted hurriedly the loads of plates from it to their massive table, the other monk, a pompous one, was bowing to Oleg and stiffened Thomas, trying not to turn his fat bottom to them. At last, he said in a high-pitched, woman’s voice, “The father superior begs humbly to know about how you are, whether you had a good sleep, and asks you to taste our frugal monastic meal, the food our gods sent us!”

Oleg was torn between the intent to run into the yard and wash his face and to rush to the table. He heard Thomas muttering, “By gods… One could wish to turn Pagan!”

The knight flopped down at the table decisively, but Oleg dashed downstairs, splashed himself with water near the well. Thomas had barely finished slicing the suckling pig roasted in fragrant leaves when the door flung open and fresh Oleg, with his eyes washed and shiny, darted across the room to the table. Thomas gulped the saliva down and said skeptically, “Such a washing — was it worth the trouble? Or that’s a rite of yours?”

“At least, I washed myself,” Oleg objected. “Why you didn’t?”

“I like to wash substantially, not in a slipshod way. At home, I would only bath in the lake. It’s just under the windows of my castle…”

“In the lake? That’s good,” Oleg agreed. “But what’s about winter?”

“Too short to mind it,” Thomas dismissed casually.

They snatched the tender juicy meat. When only several crushed bones, each no bigger than a nail, remained of the pig, the stunned pompous monk ordered, with a weak gesture, to bring the next course. He grasped that while it would be carried up from the kitchen, the rest twelve dishes, with roast swans and young geese, swollen with nuts and other things stuffed under their skin, would become empty, well if not nibbled. Those men of North were said to gnaw even at their shields…

Early in the morning, Oleg had been sure that food would stuck in his throat before the duel with true fierce warriors, but then — marvelous are the works of gods! — he gorged on, feeling the violent strength spread inside his body, fill his muscle, make the heart beat faster and blood rush quicker in his veins.

Thomas ate like a bumpkin, his noble manners forgotten. He snatched the biggest slices with both hands, ahead of Oleg, spat the bones out onto the middle of the table, though there was still enough space for those under the table. He could throw them into corners as well, all four in the room. His lips and fingers glistened with grease, the crunch of bones in his teeth was incessant, as though it were a middle-sized stone breaker in Baron Otset’s quarry.

Twice Oleg tried to tear himself away from the table, as it is difficult to fight with your belly full, but Thomas clapped on his shoulder with an air of doom: if one should die, he’d better have fun before, and there is no fun like the table set!

When the table was cleaned for the third time, Oleg stood up. “We, the good sire and I, are ready,” he told the pompous monk firmly.

The monk backed, bowing frequently, his bottom pushed the door open, he vanished in the corridor. Thomas sighed, started to get up from the table, his breath heavy and strained, his pale face reddened.

Oleg slapped on his forehead. “At last I got it, why you never take your steel off! To keep control of your paunch, yeah? At the table you can go too far, but your armor knows where to stop, doesn’t it?”

Thomas moved his eyes with displeasure, took his sheathed sword from the corner, put his baldric on. Oleg also belted with sword, adjusted the ties of bow and quiver of arrows on his back, and followed Thomas out.

The father superior, supported under his arms and followed by two old monks, ascended to meet them. At the sight of two giant figures he stopped, took pause for breath, and made a low bow. Thomas grumbled, as though he had only swallowed boulders for lunch and now they were rolling inside his steel armor.

Oleg bowed in response, knowing his back would endure. “We are ready,” he said briskly. “And the two invincibles… Have they come?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Thomas holding his breath, leaning forward to devour every word. The knight’s lean face kindled with desperate hope.

The prior made a lower, more respectful bow, fold his palms together, replied in a thin rasping voice. “They came late at night. Our guard of honor met them.”

The knight’s face went dark. He lowered his visor. For a while, three monks only saw his sky blue eyes through the slit in his steel helmet. Then Thomas raised his visor, spoke in a dull, absolutely flat voice. “We, sir wonderer and I, are ready for the tournament. Let the herald deign to declare the local rules and customs.”

“Did you look after our horses well?” Oleg asked the prior. “If we are to fight on the horseback…”

The prior glanced at his assistants, but they dropped their heads to hide their eyes. He folded his palms by his chest, bowed low. “We have caught them and placed into other stables. Don’t worry. They have the very best oats, fragrant and medicinal herbs, spring water…”

Oleg alerted with foreboding. “What’s wrong with them?”

The prior glanced at the monks again: all kept their eyes down. He sighed and went on in the same thin rasping voice that sounded like dishes clattering on a potter’s jolty cart. “They… got angry for some reason. Or just wanted to play? Anyway, they smashed their stalls, broke the manger, started to offend other horses and… touch fillies. Then the black stallion decided to scratch against the main pillar that supported the roof… Strangely, the pillar broke. The roof collapsed… Both stallions got scared.”

Thomas frowned, shot an indignant look at Oleg. His warhorse, never frightened by wild howls of Saracen trumpets and terrific beats of Persian drums, was said to have been scared by some collapsed roof! A slander!

“Scared,” the prior said again, paying no heed to the fact that Oleg frowned too, “they ran away, struck against the wall…”

“Come, come,” Oleg encouraged.

“The wall collapsed. The stallions burst into the garden. Other survived horses followed them. All the night long, the monks tried to catch them. Your horses ruined the sacred garden, which we were growing for three thousand years. They guzzled the roses of heaven brought from the Lord of Heaven by his beautiful daughter to the brave son of Emperor Fak at the dawn of time… Then your horses drank water from the sacred spring, scared away the sky frogs who deigned to rest there and broke the thirty-year-long silence of the great ascetic Tsob Tso Bae…”

“What did he say?” Thomas asked with fascination.

The prior’s wrinkled face became thoughtful. He choked, then spoke hastily, “How can I, a paltry worm, memorize the spells of ascetics? Then your horses brought down the monastery wall on the side of Bump, our sacred mountain…”

“Scratched themselves again?” Thomas asked with concern. “Sir wonderer, could they have picked up a mange? We need to check.”

“So you need,” the prior agreed hastily. “After that, they ruined the indestructible war tower — it had stood for two thousand years, endured two hundred and three wars, five hundred eighteen storms, and twelve strikes of lightning… they scratched against it too. Then they ran after the young filly, which was raised to carry the ruler of our land. They ate the garden of bonsai, the dwarf trees, mistaking them for grass. Finally, they got to the larder where we kept all our stock of wine…”

“They drank wine?” Thomas gasped. He wheeled round to Oleg with all his shining body, his blue eyes flashed with lightnings. “Sir wonderer, it was your unproven horse who seduced my honest friend at arms! With whom I passed fire and water, Crimea and Rome, saw the priest’s pear tree, stormed the Tower of David…”

“And here he stormed a tower himself,” Oleg pointed out. “A war horse, who would argue? If he had never broken into a wine cellar before… maybe he just had no opportunity?”

The prior gave some timid coughs before he dared to interfere. “In fact… it was your stallion, sir iron knight, who started to lick first… At that point, we managed to catch both and lead them into a new stable… after we moved all the monks away from there, moved our library, carried ancient manuscripts away. The white stallion got drunken and lay down into a puddle of wine…”

“Our Lady!” Thomas cried in terror. “How much time will it take to wash him clean?”

“I think they have a good wine,” Oleg said thoughtfully, “if even horses got dead drunk… Holy prior, where do you store it?”

The prior backed so hastily that he would have collapsed if his trembling assistants did not catch him under arms. “Your horses have drunk all of it! Now they sleep in the lib… the new stable.”

Oleg listened and grasped, at last, the meaning of the intermittent dull roar that had been disturbing his soul and sleep. He wanted to inform the haughty knight venomously that his noble knightly horse of blue blood snored like a plain cart horse from village, but at that moment a barefoot monk came running from the far barn, started to whisper in the prior’s ear, looking at the scary strangers askew with his eye, as dark as a bird’s.

The prior staggered. Two strong monks supported him by shoulders. His dark eyelids flickered like a butterfly’s wings in the wind.

Thomas turned his head to Oleg. It looked like a turning observation deck on the top of a watchtower. “After us,” he said in half a voice. “To fight the invincibles.”

Oleg nodded, adjusted the sword baldric up — he’d almost forgotten its unkind weight for the past years — moved his shoulder blades to check whether the quiver was in place. “Holy father, we are ready. Sir Thomas just need to be whistled up — and he will run to the world’s end for a good fight! Pugnacious as a cock. I wonder whether all Angles are like that.”

The prior shifted a desperate gaze between his guests. Down at the stairs, a large crowd of monks had gathered. All barefoot, belted with plain ropes, no usual poles and rural threshing flails with them.

“Great warriors,” the prior rasped, “we hate to upset you and kindly beg your pardon. We understand that your brave hearts are burning with desire to display the full scope of your martial art, that you crave for fight and sight of blood splashed around, that you have a fervent thirst for crunch of bones, for violent blows received and landed… received and landed… received and landed…”

“Don’t pull the cat by… paw,” Thomas interrupted. His soul could be seen reviving: a happy presentiment of the dream come true flourished as a bright crimson color on his cheeks, as white as chalk. “Where are they? In the yard? In the dueling hall?”

The prior drooped his head in grief. He would have kneeled if not kept by the monks: they were right to think they would have more trouble getting him up. “I beg you, iron knight… and you, hairy Hyperborean turnskin, to forgive us kindly! The invincibles left at dawn. Without saying goodbye… without saying a word at all, two on one horse…”

Thomas breathed out loudly, as though an iron stake he had been writhing on till the night before was removed at once. He even subsided a bit, seemed to become smaller in height. Oleg also felt a great relief: he liked it without fight, but the poor prior misinterpreted it. “Please don’t tear your brave hearts with this unheard-of grief!” he cried pathetically. “It’s not our fault it happened that way!”

“We shall not blame you,” Oleg promised. “Never!”

“Did they say anything at their leave?” Thomas asked with utmost caution. “A challenge, maybe, or a wish to meet us in another place?”

The prior shook his head guiltily. “Nothing! That’s surprising. Their leave was very quiet.”

“Hmmm… and what did they do when they came? Why that sudden?”

The prior responded slowly. His voice grew stronger, sounded with a note of fury. “That’s a great mystery for us as well. I’ll have all the monks solve this riddle. No food for them until they find the correct answer… or at least an elegant one, in the spirit of our school. The invincibles came through the gate on their splendid horses, their banners flied spectacularly in the silver moon shade, their faces were stern and arrogant, as befits invincibles. Then they saw the rock on which our heroes had once been breaking bricks. It was broken, and they asked what had happened… Then they saw the broken log and asked about it too… At that time, your horses broke through the wall of stables and began to chase fillies. Then, very unfortunately, the barrels of drinks gave a leak. You stallions deigned to drink all our wine, and the white one jumped on the invincible’s horse to mate…”

“Was it a mare?” Thomas inquired.

“No, but your stallion was so mad… sorry, so delighted with our wine that he did not mind the difference. The other horse tried to break away, but your stallion was much stronger. Besides, the invincible’s horse could not endure his weight, his spine broke…”

“Poor animal,” Thomas said indifferently. “And what about mine?”

“He fell asleep and snoring straight on the invincible’s crying horse. Due to that, we managed to catch and carry him in his sleep to the lib… the stable.”

Oleg listened to the noise and thundering sounds through the wall. “What’s about mine?” he asked anxiously.

The prior shook his head dolorously. All the monks standing at the distance behind him also shook their heads and left them shaking like that. “Yours goes on. Do you hear the thunder? It’s him running after the fillies, sheep, and she-goats, trampling hens and ducks. He peeps into windows, scaring monks and distracting them from godly reflection on the High… The invincibles hurried to mount the surviving horse together and ride away, because your cheerful stallion started looking at that horse too, and it was much smaller: white, slim-legged…”

“No,” Oleg objected firmly. “My horse is not that sort!”

Thomas gave him a once-over, as though seeing for the first time, and burst with derisive laughter. “You know little though you lived in caves! We found this horse several weeks ago. Where had he lived before? Maybe in Greece? Besides, in that very land where we… bought him, our merciful God had once in wrath… in righteous wrath, of course!.. destroyed two big cities for such tricks!”

Oleg kept listening to the crashes, croaks, and neighs. “I heard much of the monastic wines,” he said then. “We’d like to take some of it for the road, as befits true ascetics, to make the temptation of low flesh stronger, for us to fight it with all our might and have a more glorious victory!”

The prior backed and fell into the arms of his assistants. “You too?.. Nothing will remain of the monastery then!”

“Men are stronger than horses!”

Thomas also listened to the constant rumble, nodded to the prior. “You are right, holy father. We have many other things to fight. Sir wonderer, it’s time for us to leave, isn’t it? Alas, no knightly joust nor a good fight to amuse us here. The only hope is of some evil thing waiting on the road. We have nothing to do here. We ate and drank but… er… some fun we’ll have to find in some other place. And we will find it!”

The prior turned round and cried, “Pack up, for the great northern warriors leaving us, the precious tribute… er… gifts, food, and blankets. Now!”

The monks darted away in all directions. The prior turned round with caution and was led across the garden where Oleg saw a terrible picture of ruin. As though the hordes of Attila passed here. The spacious stable of non-burnt clay had crumbled. The big yellow blocks had rolled sideways, trampling and maiming tender flowers and all but filling up the spring.

“Where’s my horse?” Thomas asked with concern.

“The iron man’s horse is being woken up. They play songs over him, beat in tambourines, give him aromatic salts to smell…”

“Put your salts into ass,” Thomas advised. “Yours, not the horse’s! My friend can only be woken by this.” He slapped on his thick belt where a battle horn was hanging.

They followed monks across the garden. There were much more ruins, Thomas even gave a puzzled whistle. If he did not know it were two drunken stallions brawling at night, he would have thought the monastery visited by godly crusader knights in search of the Holy Grail.

The destrier lay in the middle of the trampled-down garden and snorted, his eyes protruding frightfully. The monks stood at a respectful distance, watched the monster with awe. Thomas brought the horn to his lips, his cheeks puffed out. A dreadful roar swept over the monastery. The window glasses shattered down with plaintive ringing. The old prior and his monks collapsed on the ground like overripe pears. The stallion’s left ear twitched in vexation, but the wild modulating snores went on.

Thomas cursed, took a deeper breath and blew the horn again, reddened, with goggled eyes. A deafening roar rent the air. Oleg jerked his head up and saw the monastic cupolas and stucco moldings collapsing. The destrier moved both ears in annoyance but his snoring only grew louder.

The knight glanced at the wonderer, saw his venomous smirk. Thomas frowned, raised his horn hurriedly for the third time. “Damn you, callous brute! To get that drunken while your master was… preparing for a hard battle! Pretty nice you’d have been under the saddle! Well, now I will get you awake, even if you become a stammerer…”

He put the horn to his lips, but Oleg seized his arm. “Wait! You’d only get him turning to other side. I’d better fetch him with a stick!”

Thomas gasped with great indignation, almost dropped his horn. “The knight’s warhorse? With a plain stick?”

“I can borrow a gilded one from the prior,” Oleg suggested readily. He took the horn from the knight, squatted near the stallion and blew almost in his ear. The destrier snuffed and flew up, as though hundred snakes bit him at once, his eyes wild and mad, his body trembling all over.

“Good morning, you drunkard,” Oleg greeted venomously. “When your master is in hangover, he has only hands trembling, as a hen thief’s, and you are shaking all over… Holy father, is my horse in the library?”

From the yellow field of sprawled monks who had just started to stir, a faint voice came, “Yes… There…”

“What is he reading there?” Oleg wondered. “Never saw him at it before… I need to take him away quickly. Why would I need a literate horse? I’d feel awkward riding him.” He went to the low yellow building. It was shaking, clots of clay dropped down from its walls.

“May your horse happen to be a Jew?” Thomas smirked after him. “I heard they are all literate!” He started to saddle his warhorse who stood reeling and watching him with bloodshot eyes. The thick mane was tangled, with luxuriant burdocks of rare eastern flowers of the Lord of Skies stuck in. The destrier reeked of alcohol, his left side looked all bare: the hair on it had got matted while he slept in the puddle of red wine. He looks at the saddle and broad belly bands like a true crusader looks at Saracen shrines.

They heard a menacing clatter of hooves from above. It was Oleg, descending by the broad stairs ahorse. His stallion had red eyes of keen reader, with bulging veins in them, but his steps were resolute enough, though deliberately cautious. Mounted Oleg looked heavy and gloomy, like a rock in the middle of a broad river. Behind him, two travelling bags were hanging on both sides of the saddle, along with the giant sword and even the bow and the quiver. The wolfskin jack was thrown open as wide as possible, baring the broad plates of muscle. The wonderer was girded by a wide belt studded with metal plates. On the right of it, there was a pot-bellied flask that attracted Thomas’s suspicious gaze at once. The knight even tried to catch the smell of it. “I’m ready,” Oleg said, cheerful as a woken-up hare. “Holy father, thank you for your bread and kindness.”

From the only spared building (though fresh cracks had already appeared on its walls) monks were carrying out the harness for Thomas’s horse and his saddle bags and bags of oats for both horses and food for two weeks journey. Oleg saw no wineskins. Probably the international custom of “the morning after” drink is not known here. If it was, the prior would have done his best to ensure that the humble pilgrims who avoid any fight would get away as soon as possible.

Thomas climbed heavily on his horse who reeled, moved his legs apart clumsily, and shook his head. Three monks came running with the knight’s lance on their shoulders. Thomas picked easily the shaft that had been polished by his iron fingers, gave a dashing salute. “Thank you for your welcome! On my way back, I’ll surely come to be your guest again. With friends!”

Screaming, monks dashed away into the building. Thomas turned his destrier to the wonderer who was glancing impatiently at him.

They trotted out of the monastery gate briskly. The iron horseshoes made a ringing clatter on the fragile folds that lay on the ground, as they had collapsed from the mighty roar of Sir Thomas’s battle horn.

Chapter 18

They had barely set off before the sun hung straight overhead. Oleg was dripping with sweat, and Thomas had even harder time: in his iron armor, he felt like a fish boiled on a blazing fire. No wind, not a single cloud!

“What was our food there?” Thomas said tensely. “Sir wonderer, would I disturb your pious reflections if I… rend the air on this immense space a bit?”

Oleg waved his hand uncaringly. “Do it.”

He heard a loud rumble. The knight breathed out with relief. His shoulders lowered, he looked back at the vanishing walls of the yellow monastery where the blast wave had gone to. “It’s the best time of my journey! As we rode to this monastery, I was, to tell the truth, all of a tremble! I even — would you believe it, dear sir wonderer? — was going to make a turn.”

“Fear takes molehills for mountains,” Oleg agreed. “There’s nothing worse than shaking too much before it begins. A pity to discover it didn’t deserve that… But our life is treacherous. In a place that looks peaceful, we can be ambushed by some terrible thing worse than our nightmares! In that grove, for instance…”

Thomas alerted, flung his hand onto the sword hilt with a clang of steel.

“It was just an example!” Oleg comforted. “Actually, there may be nothing. But, on the other hand, there can be a thing far more terrible than I said or imagined…”

Thomas went pale. His hand drew the sword out by a half, his voice gave a quaver. “You offer strange comfort, holy father! May we better bypass it? Just in bloody case?”

“We can bypass a grove but not the life. You had your meal and rest, now be ready for everything. The Secret Seven have lost us but… will find again.”

“We can’t bypass a life,” Thomas admitted, “but the grove… May I rend the air once more?”

“No, no,” Oleg said hastily and drove his horse aside.

“Is the smell strong?” Thomas asked guiltily.

“Not at all,” Oleg reassured. “Just irritates my eyes. Turn to the grove. There we’ll find shade and — I see it by crowns of trees! — a spring from the depth of earth. Its water will put out the fire in your stomach.”

Thomas was getting tense. He stiffened, with his eyes fixed on the approaching trees, then unsheathed his sword, rode on with bare steel across his saddle.

Oleg came under the green shelter first. At once, he felt as if a burden fell off his shoulders. His chest straightened out, inhaling the cool air deeply. Trees ahead were parting until he saw a big glade surrounded by mighty forest giants with stocky trunks and tangled branches.

In the middle of the glade, green and studded with flowers, there was a huge boulder of dark red and a lake, so tiny that Thomas’s shield would have covered it all. A small spout of water raised golden grinds that whirled and fell down. The boulder had a hollow that contained a small mug made skillfully and elaborately from clean pieces of bark.

Oleg vaulted off, took the mug. His horse pushed him with his warm side, reaching for water. Oleg hastened to lead the stallion away to the trees and tether. A lusty fellow but doesn’t know when to stop. Drinking much cold water while being hot makes a cripple at once.

The mug was made not only efficiently, in no hurry, but also painted with wonderful flowers, birds, and ornaments. There was the upper sky with its waters, the middle and even the lower one, but no underground at all, though enough space for it at the bottom. Oleg realized that the painter was Pagan. The Hell is the imagination of Christians.

The water burnt his mouth, made his teeth ache. It seemed to be running straight from the highest mountains covered with eternal, never melting white snows.

Thomas took the full mug of spring water from the wonderer’s hands. He gulped for a long time, watered the horses after they’d got cool. When the unsaddled stallions went to graze, he took the fragile mug with both hands again, twisted it before his eyes, as if he could not believe in such a miracle. “There is still in this damned world, full of treachery and blood, violence and perfidy… there is still beauty and love! The stranger could spit into this clear spring, spoil or foul… but instead he cleaned the hollow, dragged the stone closer — see the old furrow where he pulled it? — and made this fragile beauty of linden bark! There are men in this world, sir wonderer!”

Oleg’s face twisted in a sulky smirk. “Except the two of us? A third man, I see.”

The light fragile mug looked like a newborn butterfly on a huge gauntlet, as Thomas sat on the boulder with the thing in his palm, unwilling to part with it. His blue eyes that in a fit of temper would turn cold, cruel, and merciless, like ice, now looked as clean and unprotected as a child’s. “May Our Lady help you in all your affairs, noble man,” he said piously.

The wonderer laughed. “What if he’s no noble?”

Thomas was surprised. “How can he? Everyone who does a good deed is noble… and helped by Our Lady!”

The wonderer was luxuriating in the shade. He looked skeptical, and Thomas got angry. “Don’t you believe me?”

“Not that much,” Oleg replied evasively. “A young girl with a babe in arms… What help of her? It’s not like appealing to those sturdy lads: George the Victorious, Michael, or the Forty Martyrs…”

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas said with great dignity. “Be it known to you that Holy Virgin has sometimes helped even knights! I can tell you of the case I witnessed. It happened when we gathered for the annual tourney in honor of Saint Boromir. The bravest of the brave were coming from all the ends of Britain. The knights taught their horses and servants new tricks, while their ladies prepared their dresses. In two days before the tourney, we were all in place, looking forward to the arrival of our friend: valiant Aragorn, a heir to an ancient house whose roots go into remote antiquity… But the day went after day, and the brave Aragorn was still not there when the heralds announced the beginning of the tournament!”

“Probably he went whoring,” Oleg supposed coolly. “A long way… He could spend a night at some widow’s.”

“Sir wonderer! What happened to Aragorn was a marvel indeed. He set out three days before the tourney, like all of us. But as he rode through a small town, he saw a black smoke ahead and heard shouts. He spurred his trusty steed and, fast as a whirlwind, burst onto the square where a terrible sight opened to his eyes! A chapel of Holy Virgin was on fire. He heard women crying inside.

“Sir Aragorn, without hesitation, as it befits a knight, lowered his visor and galloped straight to the barred door, with smoke and flames bursting from beneath it! The door shattered of the knight’s blow. Sir Aragorn stormed into the hell of burning walls and church plate. In the fire and smoke, he managed to find a poor young woman: she got so mad with terror that she resisted him picking her into the saddle. Sir Aragorn took her out of the fire and left to the care of townspeople. He also left his destrier, lest his luxuriant mane be burnt, and rushed back into the fire! He was not seen for a long time. The townspeople on the square started to cry with pity for the young knight when he came out of the blazing church: staggering, burnt all over, but clasping to his breast the icon of Holy Virgin he’d saved!”

“Was it worth the risk?” the wonderer muttered, though he listened with interest. “Icons are the same wood as spades, aren’t they?”

“Oh, sir wonderer! Surely, he’d swallowed so much smoke that he collapsed like dead. They needed a long time to bring him to, and he was weak as a nestling. The best doctors nursed the brave hero back to health, as the woman whom he’d saved was a daughter of a grand seignior, and the icon was a gift from His Holiness of Rome. Two days passed before Sir Aragorn was able to mount. At once, he hurried to the tourney in Gisland…”

“Surely, he got late,” Oleg said skeptically.

“Sir wonderer, you have evil wits. As Sir Aragorn approached the jousting field, he heard the silver trumpets heralding the end of the tourney…”

“Late as a crow,” the wonderer grunted.

“And when he came to the gate, woebegone, some dressed-up knights rode out to meet him. They dashed up to him and started to congratulate, to admire his mighty blows, his knightly art, his unfathomable skill to drive his horse by knees only, with no touch to reins…”

The wonderer hemmed but kept looking with interest. Thomas went on with ardor. “Sir Aragorn was astonished to hear that he had come to the tourney at the very last hour, challenged the strongest knights and threw them off, one by one, with a single lance! He won an easy victory even over the powerful Black Bull whom the strongest knights of Britain could never make lurch in his saddle!

“Sir Aragorn offered a prayer to Our Lady and told his friends everything. And all of us — I was also there — thanked the Holy Virgin heartily, for she had assumed the aspect of Sir Aragorn and took a horse and a lance to ride instead of him into the jousting of the strongest knights! A noble deed wins an award, sir wonderer!”

Oleg thought it over for a while. “But who was babysitting for her?” he asked then innocently. “On the icons, she has such a small child! With no eye on, he can burn down the house or make such a mess…”

“It’s her business,” Thomas snapped angrily. “But you don’t doubt the fact of her help?”

“Why would I?” Oleg wondered. “In our land, we had dime a dozen female warriors. We also called them Amazons. They drove a horse without reins, shot at a tilt… They would love to throw a strong man off! I believe it. But who did she leave her child with? Our girls only romped that way until they married…”

They left the grove after a brief rest but Thomas for a long time kept looking back with pity at its peaceful greenery. The trees were big, thick, ancient, their interweaved green crowns sheltered the young grass from the scorching sun. Unhurried moles dug their burrows underground, songbirds built their nests in thick branches, and squirrels rushed merrily along the branches and trunks.

Thomas and Oleg rode in a big arc, moving to the north gradually, heading for the shore where they could take a ship to Constantinople. They avoided any settlements, even detoured around big caravans or groups of pilgrims, as those could remember the strange couple.

Only on the fifth day of the journey did they turn into a small village. They had run out of their bread and oats and salt. Without the latter, no one could survive in such a hot desert this land was to both of them.

The local smith examined the horseshoes, fixed something in Thomas’s armor with his thundering hammer. “A strange couple you are. Heading for Merefa?”

Thomas said nothing. “Is it the nearest city?” Oleg wondered.

“Yes, straight by the road. If you have some gold, I’d advise you to visit Piven, a great magician.”

“What’s he good at?” Oleg asked.

“He knows future. Tells you what happens tomorrow and the day after it and next year! It always comes true. We, local dwellers, know.”

Thomas, already mounted, gave a roar of merry laughter. “If he’s a magician, why should we pay in gold? He must know the spells to make gold of fallen leaves!”

The smith shrugged. “As you like. I only gave an advice, as a good man to good people. Every magician can make gold coins of leaves but they turn leaves again at touch of iron!”

Oleg mounted and said a warm goodbye. Thomas burst out with laughter again. “That’s why he dropped our golden coin on his anvil first!”

When they got out onto the road, Thomas was thoughtful. For a long time, he rode silent, then said firmly, “We must visit that Piven.”

“Sir Thomas…” Oleg began.

Thomas interrupted decisively. “Sir wonderer! You have your vows, and I have mine. You serve the Truth, and I serve love! I must find out how’s my Krizhina. Whether she waits for me, whether her brothers oppress… And I swear I’ll know it! No force will stop me!”

Oleg advanced his palms, as though sweeping the knight’s anger away. “All right then! Find it out, I don’t care. I thought you wanted to know our way…”

“And ride all that way trembling? No, thank you! I’m no fool to wish to know my future. I don’t want to undertake what belongs to God. But to know about Krizhina…”

He kept urging his horse on. Oleg watched him with surprise: Thomas looked glowing: he leaned forward in the saddle, as though ready to fly up and ahead of his galloping stallion. At that moment, he seemed to have forgotten even about the cup in his saddle bag.

The tall white walls of Merefa were visible from afar but only half a day later did the meandering road lead the travelers to the city gate. Thomas gawked at the walls of white stone. He could see the stripes on the gate when their folds flung open to the full, some riders in waving red cloaks darted out, one by one, on lathery snorting horses, with a dim shimmer of blooded swords and sabers in hands.

Thomas counted twenty of them. Five could barely sit in their saddles, almost each one had his armor cut and blood-stained. All the group swept by them like a whirlwind, along the other road, heading for the green hills.

Thomas and Oleg made their horses shift from gallop to cautious pace. Thomas gripped his lance tightly. Oleg moved his shoulder blades habitually to check the place of the bow.

There were sounds approaching from the city: clatter of hooves, beastly roar, clang of steel, and loud blows of war trumpets. A new group of riders on fast horses burst out of the gate: all squealing shrilly, in furry caps, bloody sabers in hands. They brandished fiercely, scattering drops of blood around. Their horses flew like birds, as they were coming upon the first group. The first rider in the second group snatched from his saddle hook a bow with drawn string, put an arrow on, aimed, lingering, as he needed to consider the skips of his galloping horse. Finally, he let the bowstring off abruptly, his arm bent in a shape of hook. Thomas and Oleg saw a flash of white teeth, as the man grinned.

The last rider in the first group was a young boy on a tired horse, his face white and childish. He had neither beard nor moustache but his shoulder and breast were stained with blood. The arrow hit him on the back, just under the neck. The boy gave no cry: he fell silently onto the horse’s neck, embraced it convulsively, with the arrow feather stuck in his back. The rider in furry cup squeaked, pulled the next arrow out of the quiver.

Thomas swore, shook his lance. The riders in red cloaks dashed past them in three score steps. Thomas and Oleg had time to discern young faces, rich blood-stained clothes. The first were two warriors on milky-white horses, flanking and covering with own big bodies the third rider: a young girl with golden hair coming out from under a light shawl. Amazed, Thomas saw a small golden crown on her head. After the golden-haired princess or queen, the rest of warriors galloped: a live screen of dozen and a half riders between her and the pursuers. The last of her defenders jerked his hands up suddenly, fell out of the saddle like a sack: an arrow was in his back. The horse dragged his body on, his arms trailed helplessly in the dust.

Thomas wheeled round to Oleg. “Shoot!” he roared in fury. “Shoot, you!”

“This is not our war,” Oleg snapped.

“Those are enemies!”

“How do you know which side is right?”

“A knight’s duty is to protect the weak! It’s noble to be always on the weaker side!”

Oleg said nothing. “Hail Britain!” Thomas bellowed in a thunderous voice. “If I don’t deliver the Holy Grail, please understand and forgive me, Our Lady!” He spurred his horse, drove to intercept the galloping riders in furry caps. Oleg swore helplessly, snatched his bow.

Thomas galloped with a breakneck speed. Two score steps remained between him and the beastly riders when the first of them was pierced by an arrow. He had barely snatched at his wound when the next one jumped up in his saddle, dropped his reins, and the third rider fell down at full tilt, head first, as though he plunged into a river.

Oleg’s horse stood motionless as a mountain but Oleg swore furiously, shooting much slower than he’d like to. Every Rusich should have six arrows in the air before the seventh one hit the pumpkin in hundred steps. Oleg could shoot eight before the ninth (or, more precisely, the first) one brought down a wedding ring suspended on a silk thread, but the riders were galloping at full tilt and Oleg shot, clenching his teeth, in fear of injuring Thomas who was in the thick of the fight.

Thomas pierced a foe with his lance, seized his sword, struck the second one and slashed the third before he discovered that, just a moment before, all the three had been killed with arrows shot so forcefully that they went into flesh up to their white-feathered ends. Thomas yelled with offense and insult, galloped on his mighty stallion through the party, throwing aside the foes, both alive and shot down, until he clashed with the back ones, unattainable for the arrows of damned wonderer. A composed murderer. He knows no joy of the honest combat face to face, eyes to eyes, courage to courage!

Roaring, Thomas brought his menacing sword on the nearest rider, slashed him down to the waist in his armor, tugged the sword free with effort, as it got stuck in bones and sinews, brandished at the next foe. One of enemies waved his saber briefly and briskly to land a sider on the knight’s neck, another rose on his stirrups, gave out a terrible howl, struck on the sudden opponent’s head with his glittering Damask saber. Thomas bellowed like a furious bear, dropped his shield, gripped the sword hilt with both hands.

The left rider kept holding the broken handle in fist. He could not believe his eyes, shifting his gaze between it and his foe’s gleaming helmet. The long sword cut him unprotected, his head and his arm, the one chopped away near the shoulder, flew up with a dull sound. The other rider still tried to cleave the knight’s neck, denting the blade of expensive saber and annoying Thomas with clanging. The two-handed sword halved him down to the waist.

Oleg shot the remaining arrows quickly. The road was littered with corpses and wounded men creeping under the hooves of mad horses, but Thomas was attacked by the five survivors. Fortunately, other horses dashed about, bumped into each other, neighed with fear, three dragged the riders entangled in the stirrups. In such a mess, the five men could not gather and attack altogether. Thomas spun round in his saddle like a loach, slashed with his giant sword, bellowed threats.

Oleg wanted to stay aside until the fight was over, but the two foes of Thomas cried something to each other, then both sheathed their sabers and took heavy axes from hooks. Both started to approach Thomas from behind: that made Oleg sent his horse into a heavy gallop.

One rider had stolen into the thick of the fight, raised his axe, but Oleg caught up and him seized by hand. The rider looked back, white with pain: Oleg squeezed his hand until bones crushed, only then he let the poor man out. The rider cried in a guttural voice, snatched a knife from his belt by another hand. Reluctantly, Oleg hit him in the face. Blood gushed out, the rider collapsed silently to the hooves of his horse.

Thomas slayed two more foes. The fourth had run into Oleg who waved away with sorrow: he had no wish to take a human life though had to do it, so the last foe was left to Thomas. The knight breathed heavily, his giant sword rose slowly, his armor belched with steam.

Suddenly they heard a distant clatter of hooves. Oleg and the rider in furry cap wheeled round together, and Thomas saw, over their heads, it were the red-cloaked riders coming back. He landed the last triumphant blow. The dead man, halved down to the saddle, slipped off the horse and plopped heavily on the road, which was already flooded with blood, strewn with corpses and moaning wounded men.

The red-cloaked riders stopped in ten steps, looking over the place of battle with distrust. Between them and the city they’d left, there were at least twenty dead enemies lying on the trodden road. Eight more men were crawling away into the thick ripe wheat, dragging their guts, left red traces behind. One of the red cloaks, an elderly man with malevolent face, vaulted off, rushed along the tracks into the wheat, unsheathing his saber on the run.

Thomas sheathed his sword, waved his empty hand as a greeting. “Good sires! We, my friend and I, thank you for the opportunity to have a fight!”

They watched him with goggled eyes. “Have… a fight?” one repeated in perplexity.

“Yes, I mean it. We rode for three days, and no one to cross weapons with!”

The riders parted, giving way to the golden-haired beauty with the crown on top of her head. He sat majestically on a splendid white horse, but her rich clothing was stained with soot. The rider on her right glanced at Thomas angrily, spat on the dusty road. “My princess,” the rider on her left told her loudly, “they are no true men! Wandering brawlers. They don’t care whom they fight.”

“Mercenaries?” the princess asked softly. Her musical young voice, a bit husky with excitement, made Thomas’s heart jump up to the throne of the Lord and fell down into the fire. He found no words to answer her, he could only look in her eyes, of the same blue as his own.

The rider on her right replied instead of Thomas, with disgust in his hoarse voice, “Worse. They fight even if not paid, just for joy. Beasts of North!”

Oleg dismounted, gathered his arrows hastily, took the quiver of the furry-capped man who’d shot the young boy. He listened to the conversation from distance. “As I told you!” he cried to Thomas. “They can have other values here!”

Thomas blushed, spoke in a tone of gross insult. “We came to the aid of the weaker side! This is how noble men do on my North, that’s true. I hope someday nobility will come here too… even if it comes at our sword points.”

“Who are you?” the golden-haired princess asked. The horse under her pawed the ground with its slim chiseled legs, proud of such a beautiful rider. The crown on her golden hair was scattering the sparkles of diamonds, sapphires, even amber, the rare gem from northern lands.

Her men watched Thomas and Oleg with a mixture of fear and hope. Three more of them dismounted and walked around with knives in hands, turning the bodies of enemies, cutting throats, gathering weapons. Five riders were trying to catch the empty horses.

“A knight crusader,” Thomas replied proudly. “Sir Thomas Malton of Gisland. I’ve slain giants, killed Saracen, fought a dragon, ate the roast liver of the lion I killed with my own hands. Now I’m coming back to my northern homeland. The one who rides with me is my friend, a noble sir wonderer from Scythian Rus’… or Rossian Scythia… from Hyperborea, in a word. He’s a great warrior and greater ascetic and hermit. His posture and words are full of dignity and speak out his noble origin, though he denies it in every possible way.”

The princess cast a glance at Oleg and forgot him at once, as she spoke to Thomas with passion and great entreaty, “Enemies broke into my city, my beautiful peaceful Merefa! You need to leave: they spare no one. I think it’s better for you to ride away with us.”

“Who are your enemies?” Thomas asked arrogantly.

“I’m a queen,” the golden-haired maiden told him. “Isosnezhda, a daughter to Kryg. The enemies came by stealth into the city, into the palace! They were led by the royal treasurer. He knew the underground passage. My father trusted that man like himself, and he… when Father died, he wanted to marry me and become a new king! I refused him, and he gave our treasury to barbarian chieftains to buy their warriors. Now they are making slaughter in my city!”

“It seems we’ll have to make our way round Merefa!” Oleg told Thomas while walking to the horse.

Thomas blushed to the roots of his hair. He sounded sharp as his sword. “A slaughter or Beltane dances, I don’t care. I must see Piven!” He drove his horse ahead by the road to the city. Oleg glanced back at the motionless warriors, mounted with a heavy sigh.

Thomas reined up near the open gate, shot a commanding look back, as though Oleg had no choice but to follow him. Oleg trotted after him, feeling the hilts of throwing knives and the sword hilt. Then he felt the ends of arrows and discovered the ones he’d taken from dead furry-capped riders to be three fingers shorter.

As Oleg came up to the gate, he heard a clatter of hooves behind. He and Thomas were caught up by two sullen warriors: he’d seen them beside the beautiful queen. “We’ll ride with you,” one of them grunted. “You don’t know the city.”

Thomas grinned and winked to Oleg.

The four of them burst into the wide open gate, dashed along the main street. Shouts and malicious laughter were everywhere, as the furry-capped warriors broke into houses, shattered the doors and windows of shops, flung things, clothing, and furniture out through the smashed windows into the street. Straight in the street, two women were raped. A naked old man was crucified on the door of his house, while women and children cried and squealed around.

The battle on the main square, in front of the palace, was burning out: about a hundred soldiers in red cloaks stood in a circle, covering with shields and repelling sluggish assaults. Pressed to the palace, they held there firmly, bristling with swords and spears, while their foes glanced back with envy at those who dragged the loot, stripped women naked, tore earrings out of their ears, broke their fingers to get precious rings. The barbarian chieftain, huge and stout, also in a furry cap, bellowed fiercely, commanding attack, but most of his preferred to plunder the captured city rather than to fight its last defenders.

The four riders galloped by the edge of the square, passed by a very old man bound to a pillar. Two furry caps were prodding him with blazing torches, the old man shrieked, the warriors yelled. Oleg heard, “Money! Where’s your gold?”. On the other side of the square, a score of red-cloaked soldiers were cornered by a huge spider, as large as a fat camel. They beat off desperately, but the spider was deft and quick in making its web and throwing it, with a wave of forelegs that looked like ceiling beams, on the victim. The man tried to slash the silver rope with a sword but it got stuck fast, and the spider was dragging him, screaming, quickly into its awful jaws.

Thomas bellowed in fury when he saw the spider’s enormous jaws closing on the poor man’s head: the blood gushed in all directions, splattering stone. The two queen’s warriors flanked the monster, slashed it with all their might, but the spider’s thick hair endured the blows. Its monstrous legs gripped the other man, brought him to the greedy open mandibles dripping with human blood.

“Our Lady!” Thomas cried. “Forbid the desecration of man by insect!” He advanced his lance, leaned to the horse neck. The spider heard the menacing pace of a heavy horse, span round at once, raising its legs with threat. Two big unblinking eyes were fixed on the galloping knight, the rest six, smaller ones, watched coldly the red-cloaked soldiers stiffened with perplexity and utter exhaustion.

Thomas fell upon, like a mighty rockslide from a mountain. The long broad steel head of the lance crunched into the monster’s wide chest. The spider stretched its hairy legs, its claws almost reached the knight. The warhorse squealed in wild fear, like a strangled pig, and pranced, thrashing with hooves. Thomas released his lance, reined the horse back.

The spider made a quick silent step after the knight, but the lance, with its thick end rested on the ground, hampered it. As the monster reached out for its retreating prey, so fragile, the lance was going deeper into the body, Thomas heard the crash. The forelegs had all but touched Thomas’s face when other legs of the spider suddenly gave way and the whole hairy body sank heavily. The red-cloaked soldiers, panting, with their swords and shields dropped down, watched their sudden savior in steel armor.

Two grim warriors who accompanied Thomas and Oleg rode forward. “Tilak?” one cried happily. “Tilak, the queen is safe! Go through the eastern gate.”

The front soldier, spattered with blood and the spider’s yellow saliva, asked briskly, “Who is this hero?”

The sulky man replied after a pause, his eyes still unfriendly. “A traveler… and his friend. That one in wolfskin who looks like a forest animal. They want Piven, the magician. Is he there?”

“I saw him in the tower,” Tilak said. “But he sealed it with a spell, for no one to come in!”

The soldiers started to get out of the back street where the spider had driven them into. One of them listened to the distant noise and shouts, then cried, “There’s still a fight at the square!”

“Att’s men,” the gloomy guard said in a sullen voice. “At least one out of three survived.”

Tilak wheeled round to his men. “Should we leave the city or help Att? Will we forget the enmity between clans in front of the common foe?” The warriors thrust their swords up. Tilak rushed to Thomas, taking hardly any notice of Oleg. “Will you help?”

“You have nothing to do here,” Thomas replied politely. “All foes left for robbery. Those on the square are no warriors but shepherds. They can only see to Att’s men staying in place!”

He whipped his horse and rushed to the tower on which Tilak had pointed. It was seen on the other end of the city. At first, Thomas only heard the clatter of hooves of his destrier, then the horseshoes of the wonderer’s stallion rang heavily behind. Thomas glanced back: two grim warriors were explaining something fierily to Tilak’s men until they dashed to the square. Then both sullen bodyguards of the golden-haired queen darted, whipping their horses, after the northern warriors.

Thomas smirked victoriously. He had no need of those two warriors, though their swords were a help, but he was flattered by the young beauty’s being anxious about the life of her unknown savior, the mysterious knight from a strange northern land!

They darted along narrow streets, sometimes trampling robbers with hooves, almost never using their weapons. The tower was growing ahead slowly, shifting to the right or to the left. Thomas could already make out its grey bricks and the round platform on its top.

The first grim warrior came up with Thomas. “No way in,” he said sullenly. “The magician seals his tower with a spell.”

“Is he blind to what’s going on here?” Thomas exclaimed.

“He doesn’t care,” the sullen warrior replied. “Whoever sits on the throne, he’ll make gifts to the magician, give him slaves and servants.”

The tower was squat and ancient, its dented stones looked like untidy grey curds. On the right, there was a massive iron door, with strange signs and figures painted in green on it.

Both grim warriors glanced back at the knight awaiting for his decision: the door had neither bars nor locks, only magic. Impeded Thomas turned to the silent sir wonderer, a hermit and great ascetic of noble origin. Oleg, staying in the saddle, rummaged in a bag with medicinal and other herbs for a while, fished out a half-dried blade of grass, leaned to the door and tucked the leaf into a slit in iron.

They heard a loud click. The door flung open, as though kicked with great force. The gloomy warriors gaped on it, and Thomas acted as if the wonderer had been opening doors for him with the famous Slavic break-grass for lifetime. He touched the reins impatiently, and his stallion moved into the doorway. Thomas bowed, lest his head hit against the low ceiling. Others caught only a glimpse of the tail of his destrier.

Oleg followed the knight, bending even lower. “Great warriors!” a hasty voice called from behind. “The magician lets no one in… and you are ahorse!”

Oleg said nothing and soon heard hooves behind. Both guards, with pale twitched faces, rode after them steadfastly, though keeping a respectful distance. Oleg looked around with surprise: he did not think there was enough room even for two riders but the fourth one came in before the door clanged back to its place.

Chapter 19

The spacious hall where they came to be in went dark for a moment before some lamps lit up. From the upper floor, by narrow stairs covered with an expensive carpet, a small hunched old man, in a long oriental robe painted with comets and Cabalist sigils, ran down to them hastily. He could barely keep up his head under the burden of enormous green turban, with an ominous bloody-red light of a big ruby over his forehead and a quivering peacock feather of incredible size. “Who?” the old man shouted as he ran. “Who are you?.. Hey, servants!”

There was a fast footfall. Past the old man, some brawny warriors with dark brown bodies ran down. Pieces of armor were fastened with belts on their naked bodies. The warriors moved in a strange way, keeping their eyes on their master.

Thomas turned his horse aside, for the great magician to have a better view of his big half-unsheathed sword. “Wait a bit, great magician and oracle,” he said with dignity. “You’ll need your servants later. But if they make one more step, you’ll have to wash up and sweep the floor yourself! I swear it on the hooves of my destrier who I stormed the Tower of David with!”

He heard a nervous clatter of hooves behind. The queen’s grim bodyguards backed their horses to the door in fear but found the folds closed tightly.

Disregarding the threats of ignorant knight, the magician breathed in, raised his hands. His sharp eyes fell on the motionless barbarian in animal skin. The barbarian replied with a direct stare. For several long moments, they were in a duel invisible to others, then the magician lowered his hands slowly. “Who are you?” he said as though in sleep. “What you want?”

Thomas heard the queen’s bodyguards gasp with one voice at the door. He straightened up in the saddle, replied firmly. “I’m a knight crusader. Even a fool can tell it by my cloak. My friend is a pilgrim from Scythian Rus’… hell’s bells, Rossian Scythia… In a word, he’s a Scyth, descendant to the extinct ancient Ruses! He’s highborn. We have an urgent need to know what’s happening now in one noble family in Britain, far away… We have gold to pay you!”

The magician shot a glance at the motionless barbarian of Hyperborea, definitely trying to fathom his strange interest in the faraway family in Britain, thought over possibilities and consequences for a while. His reply was abrupt and bitter. “Get out of my tower!”

Thomas’s hand darted to the sword hilt but unclenched helplessly the next moment. The magician bared his small yellow teeth in a malevolent grin. Everything was as he’d reckoned: the knight would do no harm to the unarmed, and the northern barbarian was only to accompany the iron-headed, not to fight instead of him.

“What about fairness?” Thomas demanded angrily. “Do magicians live in other world?”

The magician sent his servants upstairs with a casual gesture. “I leave the slave work to slaves,” he jeered. “No evil shall pass where I stand.”

“Neither it shall where we stand!”

The magician sized him up derisively. “You are just a woodcutter. I have nothing to do with wood.”

One of the sulky guards (their horses were shifting legs near the door) grew bold enough to speak in a timid voice. “O great and illustrious magician! Our city, our splendid Merefa, is plundered by cruel enemies, barbarians of desert. Wouldn’t it be better for you if the city remained in hands of good queen?”

The magician’s eyes sparkled. He puffed, as though going to kill that insolent man by a spell, but then caught a warning look of the northern barbarian and replied through gritted teeth, “I don’t mind on which horses my firewood is brought: on bay or light brown ones. If you do, then drive the men of desert away.”

The other bodyguard, who had his ear pressed to the door, cried out suddenly, “Barbarians came from other side! If they shatter…”

“Nothing on earth…” the magician began proudly but stopped short as he glanced at Oleg who had opened that door not long ago.

Thomas breathed fast, his chest heaved wildly. At one moment, he gripped the sword hilt, ready to force the magician who was definitely no noble man, but at another, he remembered the Christian virtues, along with the magician’s being unarmed and far past the age for fighting…

Oleg listened to the barely audible shouts and clang of steel. “Sir Thomas, we must go. We’ll be back! The great magician still thinks his tower is above the fight. Let him see it isn’t. That will make him more compliant!” He rode up to the entrance door, tucked a blade of grass into the slit. The bodyguards pulled the reins and bared their swords. The door flung open. The barbarians who were pounding on its outer iron surface recoiled in surprise.

The grim bodyguards were the first to burst out. They landed violent blows sideways, in a hurry to do as much damage as possible, their horses knocked the foes down. Oleg’s stallion made a heavy long leap out onto the sunlit square. The wonderer slashed with sword in all directions, knocking down both mounted and pedestrian soldiers in fur caps. After him, Thomas flew out like a steel demon of death: each strike of his sword clove the enemy down to the saddle. The tower door banged shut behind the knight, so they only heard the clang of steel and screams of dying men.

“Let’s get out of city!” Oleg shouted. “Or the whole bloody tribe will come here!”

When the dozen of foes was reduced to a couple of backing men, Oleg prohibited to chase them and drove his horse first, in gallop, to the eastern gate. Behind him, there was a thunder of hooves of three horses: one heavy and two light ones. The bodyguards galloped at their heels without meddling in fights. Thomas guessed it right: the queen commanded only to protect the strangers.

They darted along the street as a whirlwind, their horses trampling on marauders, their swords reaching the robbers who ran across their way. Several times Thomas tried to stop and rush to the aid of the offended, but either of bodyguards seized the bridle of his horse and dragged him along after the Hyperborean.

The road brought them to a tall wall of white brick. The huge gate lay on the ground, the gape of it being webbed by a giant spider, even bigger than the one killed by Thomas. Another spider of the same size gorged itself on the dead and wounded men who lay around the broken gate in scores. There was a fierce fighting.

Three furry-capped warriors were shifting the corpses. They kept away from the spider’s long legs, jumped aside in fear should the vampire drop a drained body and reach for the next one. They were filling their big sacks with adornments, rings and earrings, pouches of coins.

Thomas nodded at the marauders. “Will you do them?” he asked the bodyguards. “And the insects are ours. As a child, I hated spiders!”

“You only hated,” Oleg said angrily, “and I was afraid of them!”

They drove horses in gallop again. Thomas, with faithful lance under his arm, rushed to the corpse eater, while Oleg rode up to the giant webbing the breach in the city wall. The spider was as large as a fat bull, not to count its enormous legs, each the size of a log — but an easily bent hairy log, with knife-sharp thorns hidden in the thick hair. Each of eight legs ended with a sinister curve of a long claw, which resembled a Persian khanjal, though too curved one.

The huge hairy belly had four twitching pipes that looked like goose necks, set close to each other, dripping with saliva-like liquid setting at once and making a viscid glue. The spider pulled it on with two legs, twisted into a single rope, as thick as a ship one, hooked it up to the stone slabs hastily, ran aside, stretching the thread, and hung it on the other side of the opening. The rope had sticky sparkling drops on it: the spider would put those all over its web, with a step interval. Should the thread be sticky all, Oleg thought involuntarily, as the ignorant common folk thinks it is, the spider would not be able to run on his web: he’d get stuck himself!

He pulled out the knife, sawed the load-bearing thread with difficulty: it was the thickest, framing one. It’s easier to saw silk, he thought gloomily, hemp, or even a rope of iron threads! A cobweb is hundred times that tight. One could subside the whole city of Merefa, with its walls, towers, palaces, and kennels, on this single rope!

The spider dashed about, as it felt something wrong. Faster, Oleg cut the rest three ropes. The construction collapsed, blocking the gap with a grey tangle of cobwebs, with sticky beads gleaming on it very close between. The spider darted up to its web. Oleg made several steps aside, stopped dead. The spider started shoveling the silvery ropes up to itself, the forelegs tucked them, in disorder and hurry, into the mouth breathing out hot stench. The insect almost choked but kept swallowing its precious thread. Its dark unblinking eyes were fixed at Oleg but the wonderer did not stir: as a sorcerer, he knew that spiders can barely distinguish light from dark and even the most sharp-sighted ones of their kind are unable to see farther than their noses.

Behind Oleg, there were still crashes, shrieks, grinds of steel, scary neighs of scared horses, clanks of swords. He did not look back. He waited until the spider picked the last thread, thrust it into the jaws and went backing along the city wall. Eight dark eyes on the top of its hairy head seemed to be looking in all directions. Oleg gave himself a word that some time he would find out what those huge eyes served for. They see not a damned thing, but still each new generation of spiders comes into the world with them, again and again!

Finally, the spider got away to find another crack. Oleg turned his face to the fight. The knight had landed such a mighty blow that pierced the spider through but also threw Thomas into its hairy legs. The agonizing creature gripped him with all the eight of them, rumpled, tucked into the monstrous mandibles, trying to crack the steel shell of armor. Bathed in sticky saliva, Thomas struggled out, keeping his limbs pressed to the body, lest the spider break them away. His empty-saddled horse had run aside and stood there, crouching, shaking all over.

The bodyguards had killed two marauders. The third one was backing, trying to parry their blows. One grim warrior left him to his friend, ran up to the spider, struck it on the lower, bearing leg with all his might. The blade cut a sinew. The leg gave way, some viscous whitish blood came out. The spider flinched, dropped Thomas. With a terrible thunder, the knight collapsed on the stones. The shaggy carcass of the spider fell noiselessly on top of him.

The three men tried to drag the monster away, but it seemed to be stuck to the ground, pressing down the motionless knight. One guard fetched both heavy horses, the knight’s and the pilgrim’s one, belted a spider’s leg round and drove the horses away, brandishing his sword. The other one stood with bare sword in the middle of the alley, shielding the spider and the knight: some barbarians had emerged at a distance.

They managed to shift the spider a bit. Oleg reached Thomas’s leg, pulled him out. The steel armor grinded on the cobblestones, leaving deep scratches. Altogether they lifted the stunned knight on the horseback. The bodyguard hugged his shoulders, got soiled with sticky yellow saliva and whitish blood at once, and they rode out through the gape, now free of cobwebs.

They saw a big party of barbarians riding towards. About a hundred furry-capped warriors. With a heavy sigh, Oleg took the bow, put an arrow on. One guard bared his sword, clasped the reins. The other one who supported Thomas cried suddenly, “Tilak! Waiting for us!”

They saw red-cloaked soldiers, also about a hundred, rushing to them at full tilt from the crest of the hill. The first was Tilak, with his plain face and predatory glitter of sword in hand. He seemed to have not only his score but also the warriors who’d been keeping a perimeter defense of the palace square under the command of Att.

The barbarians slowed down, then pulled up. They had no wish to meddle in a bloody and fierce fight with desperate men, professional warriors who had no valuable possessions, while a wealthy unprotected city is close at hand, just behind the broken gate.

The four men rode slowly (because of Thomas swaying in his saddle) to meet Tilak. He had his galloping party stop, raised his sword in a greeting. “Thank gods! You alive. How’s the city?”

“You saw it,” the guard who supported Thomas replied grimly. “Men of desert brought monstrous spiders with them. These creatures devour people dead and alive, spread panic and terror. The city is plundered. Where’s Att?”

“He died, shielding me with his own body.”

“The inter-clan enmity forgotten?”

“Yes. But the price was terrible.”

Tilak’s men surrounded them. The close group rode away from the city, waded a small river, ascended into a narrow valley between green hills. The green place was red with cloaks: lots of warriors, wounded or dog-tired, lay in a sparse oak grove and around it. Their horses grazed aside. Women bustled among soldiers, carrying jugs, helping healers to dress up wounds. Some fires were blazing high, water boiled over them in sooty cauldrons.

Near the grove, there stoop a tent of yellow silk. A small red flag on top of it was trembling under the blows of wind. Around the tent, exhausted warriors sat straight on the grass but their swords lay close at hand. At the sight of galloping riders, several man rose up and barred the entrance into the tent. They moved in no hurry, as they saw red cloaks on the newcomers and the first rider was Tilak, known to many if not all soldiers.

The heavy trample of several hundred hooves must have been heard inside the tent, as Isosnezhda, the golden-haired queen, came quickly out of it. She had washed her face and put her hair in order, but her blue eyes were still blazing with fury.

Tilak dismounted first, gave her a low bow. “My queen! We fought as hard as we could. If not these Franks, I’d have stayed in the city. Due to them, we’ve taken out even the men of Att. They fought on the square!”

Isosnezhda turned her eyes on the bodyguards. Both of them kept beside Thomas, though he was sitting in the saddle firmly by that time. On the left arm, he had a gleaming shield with his coat of arms, and a giant lance, formidable with its size, was swaying in his right hand. One guard rode ahead and bowed. “My queen! The Franks have been to the captured city. They even broke — we’d never have believed it! — into the tower of great magician! They also slew the monsters whom the men of desert brought.”

Thomas coughed with confusion and interfered. “There’s little honor in breaking into a helpless old man’s place. And the monsters… I doubt whether you mock me. In my country, any servant can kill spiders with his broom. Those were your warriors who fought bravely, Your Majesty!”

The riders who had come with him were dismounting, leading their horses away. They glanced at the mighty knight, due to whom they broke out of the city, with fear and respect.

“They took us aback!” Isosnezhda said in fury. “We had only a small force in the city.”

“If there are more hosts,” Thomas spoke slowly, with his admired eyes glued on the golden-haired queen, “it would be a good idea to send for them.” He dismounted. Young boys came running to him, helped to take off the heavy armor, which was caked in the blood of others and the spider saliva and slime.

Oleg found a stream and got into the cold water. He bathed, hooting with delight, splashed himself with water from cupped hands, as though afraid of drowning.

Isosnezhda took a quick counsel with Tilak, then came up to Thomas. “Sir, I see you are not only a brave warrior, but also versed in strategy. I have big groups of my trustworthy hosts on the border of my kingdom. It’s two days journey from here.”

Thomas shook his head. “Too long. As soon as tomorrow, the barbarians will put a strong guard on the gate and have common men walling in the breaches. We need to attack now! While their battle fever is down, while they are dispersed, robbing, raping, and drunken. I saw them breaking into a storehouse of wine. They are no fierce host anymore but drunken robbers! But tomorrow they’ll turn warriors again.”

The queen cast a glance at the green valley. There were three hundred warriors but hardly twenty men up their feet: the rest were sprawled in the grass with exhaustion. A third of them was suffering from wounds they’d not noticed in the heat of the battle. “I would go with you!” she said bitterly. “But look at my men!”

Thomas shifted his feet as he glanced the grove and the valley over. Only the greatest stayers were coming to fires and trying to eat, but even their faces expressed despair and submission to the doom. The rest lay with their arms spread, too weak to talk or even to take their armor off.

“Tomorrow we won’t have such a good chance,” Thomas reminded her. He bent his knee slowly. Isosnezhda came closer. Even kneeling, the knight was almost as tall as the young queen. He felt the warmth emitted by her body. Her blue eyes were large and begging, her golden hair seemed to have a brighter gleam than her crown with all its jewels. “My sword is at your service, Your Majesty!”

She touched his broad shoulder with her gentle hand. His thick knitted sweater was wringing wet and smelled of strong male sweat. Her thin pale fingers lingered for a while. On their way back, they touched Thomas’s cheek, leaving a red trace, then his cheek flushed all over, then his face, even his neck went crimson. Isosnezhda felt her own cheeks and ears glowing too. Fortunately, the latter were hidden by hair.

“Stand up, valiant Northman,” she said in a different voice, trying her best in pulling herself together. “The help offered by hero is a great honor to me, weak and helpless woman. You are right. I’ll speak to my warriors!”

Thomas stood up, his broad shoulders hanging over her. He seemed as huge as a rock, his blue eyes went dark. “Let me speak to them myself,” he asked hoarsely.

Three more riders came into the valley by the road from city. Two of them supported the third one who was bandaged hastily and spattered with blood. All the three had plates of their armor cut and bent. One had a broken arrow stuck in shoulder, but he kept supporting his friend manly.

Others ran to meet them, helped to dismount. “What’s in the city?” Isosnezhda asked quickly.

“No more men of ours,” one of the newcomers replied. “Pillage everywhere. They break houses, searching for gold, destroy temples. They took chasubles from the Christian church, tore golden settings off thr icons. A score of barbarians, with their chieftain at head, stormed into the magic tower.”

Thomas heard it, came running with a terrible shout. “What? The tower?!”

The wounded men were laid down on the ground. Women wiped their blood hastily with wet cloths. “They’ll destroy it,” the warrior replied gloomily. “Someone set a rumor there’s a treasure in basement. A big mob gathered. With picks, crowbars… Who could think the magic tower can be captured?”

Thomas groaned bitterly. Isosnezhda looked at his blackened face with sympathy, touched his breast tenderly. “Thank you for your compassion, mighty warrior.”

Oleg came, jolly and wet like a seal, with his hair plastered to the forehead. “The magician isn’t dead still!” he said cheerfully from a distance. “While they believe he hides a treasure, they won’t kill. They’ll only shake him a bit. And the fool of him will finally see the difference between us and those barbarians!”

Thomas shook his head with disapproval. “Sir wonderer, we should rescue the old man. It’s cruel to leave the old to desecration.”

Oleg hemmed. He looked at the knight, then at the queen. She blushed under his gaze but raised her small nose with pride and straightened up, though her back was straight before. “And save the kingdom while we’re about it?” he asked Thomas. “Oh, Thomas. a good knight of Christ’s host… A knight of Anglic dream! All right, but you see to everyone having a rest and a hearty meal. Meanwhile, those in the city will get drunk enough to crawl on their fours…”

The queen looked at him with disgust. “You are a companion of the noble knight. Otherwise, I would not tolerate your abominable words. Men will take a rest if they can but any food will stick in their throats! Back in the city, their families are dying!”

“That will make them angrier,” Oleg said sadly.

The sun touched the tops of distant hills when Isosnezhda, on her white horse, rode into the middle of the camp. The folly shifted her chiseled legs nervously. Isosnezhda raised her hand. The wide sleeve slipped down, baring the white skin, never exposed to direct sunlight. “Warriors of glorious Merefa! Our beautiful city is taken by foes. If we retreat, we shall have no future. Now our families are destroyed, our beloved raped, our children thrown into fire! There will be no more Merefans if we leave. All of us will be chased like wild beasts. We shall die all, perish with no fame. But the gods heard us. They sent two great warriors to our aid. Though both are Franks, but, as you see, even their far North can sometimes, at the will of gods, born heroes to serve our great nation! These two Franks have slain two monsters and drove away the third one. They will lead us for the battle if we find enough strength to follow them!”

Thomas towered on his huge black stallion, like an iron mountain riding the stone one. He also jerked up his arm that looked like an iron-bound log for knocking castle gates away. “Warriors of Merefa!” he roared in a thunderous voice. “I speak as a professional warrior, a veteran to many battles. Believe my great experience: the best time for attack is now! Their bellies are heavy with food, their minds befuddled with wine, and instead of swords, they carry bags of plunder, as they can’t trust each other. They are dispersed in the city: the biggest parties number no more than five or six men, as that’s enough to break the strongest gate. Though their total number is much larger than ours, but we Franks win wars by no numbers but skill. I advise you to try it too.”

Three hundred warriors volunteered to go with the iron knight, whose superiority was recognized unreservedly even by Tilak and other generals. Determined to win or die, the party burst into the city through the broken gate. Just as Thomas had predicted, there were no guards on the gate, nor in the streets. Dead bodies were everywhere. Narrow streets and alleys were encumbered with the furniture and dishes thrown out of the windows. In some places they saw houses on fire, heard terrible howls of dogs. Sometimes they bumped into barbarians loaded with loot and slashed them on the go: Thomas was leading his party to the palace.

At full tilt, shaking the earth and the city with thunder of hooves, they rushed to the palace square. Drunken, befuddled barbarians started to drop out of houses. Those who got onto the way of the galloping party fell down, with their heads cleaved, or simply trampled by hooves: the knight did not allow to stop and muddle in fights.

Thomas galloped at the head, bending to the stallion’s neck, his long lance looking for a prey. Two grim guards rushed after him, glancing at the mighty Frank without former aversion. He slew monstrous spiders, killed many barbarians and was now leading Merefans to save their own city!

A short skirmish broke out at the entrance to the square: they bumped into a small party of newcomer barbarians. Thomas left some of his soldiers to the fight and galloped to the palace with the rest.

One guard cried out, pointed at the windows with anger. Thomas saw human figures darting there above: only few had furry caps of barbarians on. “The treasurer?” he asked quickly.

“In person,” the guard uttered fiercely. The knuckles of his fingers gripping the sword hilt went white. “And his traitors!”

“He’s yours,” Thomas allowed. “Tilak, surround the palace! Let no bloody dog slip out.”

The warriors dashed into the wide open gate with blood-curdling screams, galloped ahorse up the broad marble stairs. In a brief fight at the door, they crushed the defenders and burst into.

Thomas followed the red cloaks with approving eyes. “They went wild… Good! And I thought no people in the world are as strong as we, Angles… Do you think they’ll cope?”

Oleg moved his shoulders. “I always thought so.”

“Oh, sir wonderer…” Thomas said, upset.

At once, they turned their horses and rode by a narrow street to a smaller square, with the skyscraping magic tower on its edge. “Can you open the gate again?” Thomas asked tensely.

“It’s easier now,” Oleg assured him.

Thomas looked into the wonderer’s tranquil face with suspicion. “Why? Do you have stronger herbs?”

“No. The tower has no gate anymore.”

At full tilt, they stormed into the tower through the gap. Steel horseshoes rang against the broken iron door. On the stone floor inside, the clatter became dry and muffled. The furniture had been reduced to scorched splinters, the walls speared through in search of hidings. There was a strong smell of burning. The magician’s servants lay dead on the stairs.

Thomas vaulted off and ran upstairs. His iron soles banged on the floor, he breathed heavily and swore. Oleg also left his horse, rushed after the iron champion of justice. Three barbarians dashed towards them. Thomas was ready. He slew two of them with mighty blows, and the third fell with a knife hilt in his eye. Thomas jumped over him, darted into the room. Oleg pulled the knife out of the bloody socket, wiped it thoroughly, tucked into the cover on his go. The sword was dangling on his back, reminding importunately of itself, but Oleg hoped he would not have to unsheathe it soon.

The strange room probably belonged to the magician. It was crammed with magic things, the floor strewn with pieces of broken glass and crockery, scraps of clothes and old books and manuscripts. The naked magician was crucified violently on the wooden wall. His wrinkled senile body bore huge swollen blisters and black charred places where his flesh had been burnt with hot iron.

Thomas hastened to cut the bounds and put the magician carefully down onto the bed. Oleg covered the old man’s tortured body sympathetically with a cloak bearing comets and Cabalist sigils. “Do you hear me, magician?” Thomas called insistently. “It’s we again! Franks!”

The magician’s eyelids flickered but his eyes remained closed. “The same… I tell… nothing…” his dry lips whispered.

“We are friends!” Thomas cried more loudly. “We don’t need your dribbling treasures! Even those in the base of your tower!”

Oleg came out onto the observation desk, shouted from here, “Tell him we drove away the enemies! Those who were roasting him like a quail!”

The magician listened. “Foes still in city…” he said in a faint voice. “I feel… Drive them away, then…”

“Fool!” Thomas yelled in a helpless fury. “This is your gratitude?”

The magician opened his eyes, senile and lackluster, with effort, whispered in a choking voice, “You can torment me, burn, tear with pincers… I say… nothing…”

Thomas clenched his fists, gritted his teeth. His eyes narrowed until they turned into slits flashing with blue lightnings. Suddenly, a wide palm fell on his shoulder, a mighty voice roared in his very ear, “Let’s go! The old man takes stubbornness for persistence. Worse, he takes it for being steadfast. Let’s get back to the sub… to our soldiers.”

“He’s a magician!” Thomas cried in angry astonishment. “Why doesn’t he understand?”

“A magician. So what? A skill to make spells does not make one smart or kind. Or simply good!”

Oleg pulled the furious knight out into the hall downstairs, where their frightened horses strolled among the broken furniture. Thomas took a running jump into the saddle, imitating Oleg. His stallion reeled, moved his legs apart.

Shoulder to shoulder, they galloped out of the tower and across the evening square. On the far side of it, some houses were blazing, crimson smoke went high into the darkening sky where the first stars had emerged. Shouts and clang of steel were heard from the palace.

A crowd of drunken barbarians was coming towards them from the plundered market. They made much noise, cried out wild songs. Many of them carried sacks or were dripping with necklaces they’d torn off women, small pockets in their wide belts filled to burst with coins. At the sight of two huge riders, the robbers who walked ahead got sober in a flash, their hands gripped saber hilts.

“A timely meeting,” Thomas gasped out with great relief. “Without it, I’d have exploded with rage!”

Oleg sighed, looked at the enraged knight askew with his sad green eye, adjusted his quiver with a move of shoulder: that put the feathered ends of arrows just beneath his fingertips. I hate to kill even animals and birds but have to send sharp iron into live men.

With a roar of fury, Thomas burst into the middle of the crowd, trampling over the first rows. His long sword glittered scarily in the glow of fires, red with both the fires and fresh blood. The barbarians surrounded him, screaming wildly. Thomas cleared the space around himself with three violent blows, flung his stallion ahead, leaving the slashed corpses behind. He roared with laughter, his destrier snorted, knocked with hooves, kicked and bit, as though infected with the rage of his rider.

Thrice Oleg drew the bowstring, but Thomas slashed with such a fury that barbarians crumbled like wooden chips. The darts they threw from a distance slid on his armor with no harm done. An arrow hit it with a ringing click, broke into splinters. Paying no heed to saber blows, Thomas span in the saddle, as though on hot coals, his sword seemed to slice in all directions at once. The air was full with rattles, shouts interrupted on half a sigh, and terrible crunch of crushed bones.

Chapter 20

Once the fighting was over, Tilak ordered to fix the city gate and post guards on it. Then he selected soldiers to ride with him all over the city, in search of hiding barbarians. As he saw two mighty Franks riding towards him, he squealed with joy.

“The Queen sent her bodyguards to find you,” Tilak told them. “She had a sudden feeling as though you’ve left us! I’ve rummaged half of the city myself!”

“We were in another half,” Thomas grunted. He seemed to have just come out of shambles. Even his horse was bathed in blood, and his saddle was soaked with it: thick and dark, looking black in the light of fires.

The northern barbarian in wolf skin by the knight’s side was clean but, judging by his face, he’d also been killing. Besides, his quiver was empty and his sword on his back, in northern way, as if he would like never to see it again.

“Isosnezhda told to invite you to the feast,” Tilak said solemnly. “To celebrate the victory over barbarians. The two of you are the greatest heroes! Especially you, sir iron knight!”

Thomas shook his head dismissively. “We have to visit the great magician first.”

“Haven’t I told you?” Tilak exclaimed in surprise. “Barbarians had been to the tower once again before they fled. They burnt it down, destroyed all, cut the magician into pieces… Nothing remained there but burnt walls!”

Thomas watched Tilak in stupefaction. The knight did not seem to fathom what had happened. His jaw dropped, reins slipped out of his numb fingers. His stallion stepped aside, Thomas came to himself and turned to the leader of Merefans. “How… How that happened? How could he allow to be killed?”

Tilak shrugged, and the wonderer spoke in a gentle voice, “Stop rending your brave heart, Sir Thomas. You lost nothing. What could you be foretold by a magician who failed to see his own destiny? When we grasped the whole thing of it, he kept balking like a senile ass of Bagdad. Only once had he got the right thing: when he decided not to bully us…”

They turned their horses slowly, rode to the palace, white in the dark of the night. The lights were on, and not the ones cast by fires: soldiers hurried to light the remaining lamps, drive torches into walls in places. They were cleaning the halls hastily, pulling tables together, in preparation of the triumphal feast.

Near the palace, their horses were taken and led running to the tethering post. Thomas and Oleg waited, shifting their feet. Tilak led the way up the broad marble stairs, which were still blood-stained. The survived locals dragged corpses away hastily, searching their pockets to return what barbarians had robbed them of.

Thomas glanced back at Tilak anxiously. “How long are your feasts? Not a week long, I hope?”

“A good feast is a long one,” Tilak replied with dignity.

“Then I’d prefer a bad feast,” Thomas decided. “Sir wonderer and I have a long way ahead!”

Tilak gasped, stopped at the middle of the stairs, his eyes as huge as dishes for celebratory meal. “Sir noble crusader! At these very moments, a throne chair is put in place for you! Have we missed a thing?”

Thomas blushed, glanced over at the wonderer. Oleg grinned, evidently amused by the knight’s confusion. “But… Isosnezhda is a fair ruler, isn’t she?” Thomas asked Tilak hastily, angry with himself for being embarrassed.

Tilak nodded, keeping his astonished eyes on Thomas. His voice grew stricter. “Her father died last year, and her mother perished five years ago in fire. And now the Queen has lost the only relative whom she trusted: the wicked treasurer was her cousin once removed! Our kingdom needs a strong hand, sir. Isosnezhda has our loyalty… and our love, but we, her faithful warriors, would like a strong man on the throne beside her. I’ve heard the talks of my soldiers today… Forgive my insolence, sir, but they spoke of you as our ruler!”

“I will not infringe upon the queen’s sovereign rights,” Thomas told him with dignity. “I am Thomas Malton of Gisland, a crusader of Christ’s hosts, a man of my word and honor!”

Tilak advanced his open palms. “Sir, we’ll do all of it by ourselves!” he tried to persuade. “Today the assembly of generals will proclaim you the king. We believe you’ll treat beautiful Isosnezhda kindly. You can marry her. If she tries to refuse you, then we, her generals, will threat to turn against her. We’ll force her, urge her!”

Thomas hummed and hawed and lifted his hands. Oleg took mercy on him, clapped both Thomas and Tilak on shoulders, and the three of them entered the royal palace. Thomas was greeted with joyful shouts. People came running from the other side of the palace to see him, and they who had fought side by side with him, in those valiant three hundreds, pointed proudly at him, their leader who swept dirty barbarians away as the wind sweeps dry leaves!

In the great hall, men were taking their seats. Servants were running off their feet, bringing food and wine to the palace from looted shops and stocks. Isosnezhda saw the mighty figures of northern warriors from a distance and beamed at once. Her radiant eyes shone like morning stars.

Thomas got his legs stuck to the floor. While he bowed to the radiant queen at a distance, keeping his eyes on her and forcing a broad smile, he whispered desperately to Oleg, “Sir wonderer. You’ve been to caves, you’ve spoken to gods… though Pagan, but gods all the same… Could you please speak to the queen? Explain her that my soul belongs to other lady?”

“And have her scratching my eyes out? I’m no fool. I’ve seen her nails… And she also has teeth, as sharp as a shark’s.”

“But she’s a queen! No plain woman…”

“She’s looking at you like a woman, no queen. Sort it out yourself, I want no part. You shouldn’t have smiled to her. All of them treat it as a marriage proposal!”

The feast turned out to be also a war and state counsel, an assembly of generals, a resumption of oaths. The losses were great, and the faces of warriors at the table gloomy. Wine flowed like water, but one or another general would have his teeth gritted with fury and a silver cup crushed in his hand, spilling the wine over the festal tablecloth.

The frightened chieftains of neighbor tribes hurried to send their heirs or young daughters as hostages and swear their loyalty on a sword, a fire, or a black dog’s entrails. The heirs were placed, once they had come, in a stone outhouse in the garden, under a vigilant watch.

While the chieftains said their oaths, Thomas, in full armor, stood behind the young queen’s throne. He was fearsome, his eyes glittered menacingly. With a metal clink, he flung his huge gauntleted hand on the hilt of the giant two-handed sword. The barbarians who managed to leave the city alive had time to bring their tribes a word of that terrible insatiable blade.

Oleg sat at the far table with ordinary soldiers, drank enough for three and ate enough for five. His merriment looked unnatural. Thomas glanced at him with envy: the wonderer kept a low profile, following, as he had explained, the common way of his people, so he was not praised as a hero but he also got none of the concerns Thomas was drowning in, like in a teacup. Oleg spoke unhurriedly to Tilak, sparing Thomas that unpleasant talk, and arranged he would prepare horses for them, see to the remounts loaded with blankets, wine, meat and oats, and then, at dawn, lead remounts and destriers from the stables straight to the marble stairs of the palace.

The feast lasted all the night long. Thomas got out to his horse just from the table. The beautiful Isosnezhda came out to see him off: that extended Thomas’s torments. Her large blue eyes were full of tears, a begging look in them, her lower lip quivering. She did not trust herself to speak, only touched the knight’s chest gently with her delicate fingers, keeping her eyes on him. As she raised her face, he saw her tears dammed in the lakes of eyes.

When Oleg reminded Thomas impatiently, in half a voice, that one should not prolong suffering, neither own nor those of others, Thomas clenched his teeth and mounted abruptly. As the stallion felt his master’s mood, he gave a heavy sigh, cast a reproachful look at the queen.

“Farewell, my wonderful knight from a fairy land,” the young queen said in a rustling, barely audible voice. “Don’t forget: your kingdom is here. It shall always be waiting for you! I will keep my maidenhood to the end of my days. Whenever you resolve to come, your throne will be waiting. I’ve put your gauntlet and your dagger on the seat. They will stay there until you come and take them… and sit on the throne if you wish. No other man shall ever sit on it.”

“And you?” Thomas forced out.

“Me?” Isosnezhda smiled sadly. “I shall rule in your name. A queen waiting for her powerful defender to come back.”

Oleg grasped the reins of Thomas’s stallion with his strong hand, gave a loud whoop. The horses galloped straight away, their steel shoes thundered on the ground. The road rushed to meet them in fright, threw itself under the hooves, slipped beneath them in a flash, to sigh with relief and come to itself behind the riders.

The horses rushed in a heavy gallop until they got steamy. Oleg never glanced back. When the white city walls hid behind green hills, he allowed the tired horses to take a slow pace, then heaved a sigh. “Well, a glove and a dagger — not big loss indeed. Though certainly a pity. I hope you left your old gauntlet? The spare one you had in your bag?”

Thomas straightened up with insult. “Sir wonderer!” he said with pain. “How can you? At this moment…”

Oleg hemmed with disapproval. His eyes remained inquiring.

“An old one,” Thomas confessed reluctantly. “But the dagger was new!”

Oleg nodded. As he shifted his attention to the road ahead, his eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose. Thomas felt awkward when he understood that his caring friend was thinking where on their way to buy a three-edged narrow dagger to replace that one, and also a couple of spare gauntlets, made of mail rings and topped with plates of steel, as those iron gloves are the most frequently broken pieces of armor…

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas asked with confusion, “please don’t tell anyone we fought spiders, or I’ll be mocked at home. They won’t get it. Fools.”

There were about forty versts from Merefa to the coast of Black Sea. They set out at dawn and had a brief rest in the torrid afternoon. Oleg hoped to reach the sea by evening. If their luck was good, the next morning they could be sailing a ship: one of thousands plying along the coast, never taking a risk to go too far from the land. This way, along the shore, they would get to Constantinople in several days and part there. The noble sire knight would take the northwest road, through Serbia, Croatia, states of German and kingdoms of Frank to his Britain, while the way of Oleg the wonderer lay to the north, across the dangerous lands roamed by mounted hordes of Pechenegs, Kumans and other people of steppes…

Thomas still rode in his full armor, even in his helmet, enduring the heat and steaming, though within scores of miles around there was not a soul and, in places, no bush, only grass too low to hide a hare. Seldom they came across villages and rode past, with their noses turned up proudly: Merefans had kindly provided them with food and money enough for a year.

Even the slightest memory of Merefa made the knight’s face dark. Oleg, feeling pity for his friend, would hurry to amuse him with true occurrences and funny incidents of the lives of kings and heroes. He knew lots of such stories, and Thomas began to listen involuntarily.

Once their road came to a big city, which was being flooded with immense crowds of pilgrims. A grand temple towered majestically above the city, in the very center. The city has grown around the temple, Thomas grasped. The temple was surrounded by noisy caravansaries. Thousands of pilgrims moved in a never-ending chain, by three or four men in a row, to offer their worship to the Eternal Fire.

“It looks like that fire is really cleansing,” Thomas said with respect.

“It cleans no damned thing,” Oleg replied angrily. “Let’s go. Ride on!”

“Wait,” Thomas asked him. “I want a look at it.”

“No,” Oleg said hastily. He turned his face away as if that fire were burning his eyes. “We must hurry!”

Thomas nodded. “Your words are sweet like honey to my faithful Christian heart. Probably, you’re not a lost man. You can be brought into the bosom of the Church… on a good chain, surely. And there your mean soul shall be saved with a trifling penance imposed on you… for some couple of thousand years. But why are you so sure that Pagan fire cleans nothing? The Lord, in his unfathomable mercy, could allow…”

Oleg dropped his head, turned away, hiding his eyes, like a devil would turn from a holy crucifix. When he spoke, he sounded broken, his voice full of strange guilt and even repentance. “What if some muddler, a trainee sorcerer, a botching one, had lit that fire but failed to put it out? And here it burns… a reminder of his folly. And people… are just people. Everywhere.”

“Really?” Thomas doubted. “Could such a muddler be? That’s no muddler, that’s… I don’t even know who!”

“He could do it by accident!” Oleg snapped.

Thomas clenched his gauntleted fist. “For such a botch, I…”

Oleg heaved a sigh. Thomas looked around arrogantly. A big city that grew around the wonderful fire for centuries is noisy and boiling, a swaying sea of humans: bright and colored, loudmouthed and cheerful. They are men, though infidel. Thomas did not want all his enemies to be idiots, as that meant himself a match for them.

“Though there were woods then,” Oleg said suddenly, with strange melancholy. “Wild woods. And marshes everywhere. No sky to see, and miasmas… Let’s ride faster!”

At noon, when the scorching sun was bending them down to the ground, Oleg, bathing in sweat, pointed silently at two oaks that grew near a small stream. Like any trees in the open, they had matured with no hindrance and grew stout. Their thick branches could hide from sun or rain a big party — or a whole caravan with its camels, donkeys, and goods. Thomas’s stallion, who had been looking at Oleg with hope for a long time, turned after him eagerly before the knight touched his reins.

They were in no more than hundred steps to the oaks when a strange ragged figure came running up the slope on its fours from the stream. Shrieking shrilly, the creature fell, then got up to its hind legs, staggered two steps and fell again, just under the tree.

After it, a big animal darted out, so enormous that it took Thomas some time to recognize a bear. He ran in no hurry, the hair on his paws and belly matted, as if he was just fishing in the stream, its mouth full of sharp white teeth. The strange creature turned out to be a girl with tousled filthy hair. She pressed her back against the trunk, terrified, as she watched the animal rushing to her.

“Our Lady!” Thomas cried and lowered his visor. His stallion broke into gallop as usual. The bear gave a roar, and the destrier, though he’d been storming the Tower of David, went trembling in a broad arc to round the wild beast.

Thomas swore, hurled his lance on the ground, gripped his sword, and vaulted off. The stallion tried to gallop away, Oleg rode after it and managed to catch the frightened animal. Thomas, with bare sword in hand, ran to the bear who stood upright before the screaming girl, colossal on its hind paws, while its forepaws stretched out, as though in delight.

Seeing that he would be late, Thomas yelled, threw the sword with all his might, using it as a dart for the first time in life. The sword flew, whirling in the air, hit the bear flatwise on his back. The animal (he’d already seized its prey) recoiled with surprise at the sudden strike of heavy sword. The girl shrank back with a scream, her bare shoulders in bloody marks of the bear’s claws.

The bear wheeled round to his offender. It was no young bear who knew nothing of dogs and men: that one had evidently met hunters, knew the sharp pain of flying arrows and piercing spears. He uttered a terrible roar, which shook the air and the ground, but did not dash ahead in blind fury. Instead, he looked his enemy over with bloodshot eyes, searching for the glitter of bitter biting blade.

Thomas felt his back creepy — and regretted acutely he had neither a spear to spin the animal nor his huge two-handed sword. Here it lies! Under the bear’s thick paw, half pressed into the earth. His hands were empty, and the animal was gigantic, as he’d never seen before.

In two steps on the ground, there was a long pole with a charred and sharpened end. Thomas took a grip on its smooth wood before he grasped it was a spear: a primitive one made by a savage who’d burnt its end in the fire to harden it!

The bear sank to his fours, started coming to the knight slowly, carefully. His red eyes blazed with malice, sharp teeth glittered. Thomas, adapting to the simple weapon, kept its sharp end down, low to the ground. His cousin once removed died of wounds he received when a bear, half as large as that one, had ducked under his steel spear.

Thomas muttered a curse. Assuming the risk to be taken unarmed by the bear’s sudden attack, he lunged quickly, jabbed the forepaws, both of them, with the charred end. He hoped to make the animal rise on its hind paws. That will be a chance to thrust the sharp pole in his heart.

The beast gave a terrible roar but did not stand up. In a flash, he snatched the pole with his large mouth, shook his head. Thomas screamed with pain: his arms were all but torn off the joints. He heard a crunch and saw a broken piece, shorter than an axe helve, in his hand.

Ridiculous, a thought flashed in his head. To fight and win on the walls of Jerusalem, take the Tower of David by storm, survive in dozens of battles… and die of a forest animal’s paw?

He cast a frightened glance around in search of the wonderer. Oleg had just seized the reins of the knight’s horse, in half a mile from the fight. “Run!” Thomas cried to the girl. She watched him with eyes goggled in terror. “Run, fool! To that man with two horses!”

Suddenly, the bear stood up. Thomas strained his shoulders, stretched his arms out. A great heaviness came down on him, as though a mountain collapsed, his throat cramped with noisome breath. He felt his spine cracking, his vertebrae bursting, his ears were ringing of the deafening roar. The bear kept crushing and breaking, the steel armor caved in. The air burst out of Thomas’s chest with rattling, his ribs brushed painfully against each other.

They took a firm stand, grappling each another, but Thomas only tried, without success, to join his fingers on the animal’s broad back, while the roaring bear clawed the steel plates of his armor. There was terrible grinding, as strong claws broke, like fish scales under a knife, steel pieces fell to the ground, claws stuck into the small rings of mail. Thomas twisted with pain: the bear’s long claws reached him through the thick sweater, dug into the muscle on his back.

He stopped trying to join his fingers in the lock — the bear was too broad — but squeezed the animal with all his might. His breath rattled, the bear roared, growled, and spat. Thomas got weaker, pressed with the last of his strength. Suddenly the bear loosened his grip, tried to release himself, to push the iron knight away. Thomas pressed on, surprised at keeping his feet still. The bear’s mighty roar turned into squealing, doggish whine. The beast wriggled, tried to push free again. Thomas took a deep breath and a tighter grapple on the bear (he now seemed smaller) and squeezed him with all the force he could gather. He heard a crunch under his arms, then a gurgle. A warm liquid rained down on his helmet, poured over his eyes.

Thomas released his grapple, stepped away quickly. Blood came gushing from the huge jaws hanging over him. The eyes of the colossal bear, as red as coals, died out. The animal collapsed on his back, the ground shook. Thick paws gave a twitch and stretched out.

The girl was sitting under the tree with terrified expression on her dirty, soiled face.

The wonderer was leading unhurriedly the destrier with moving ears. He glanced Thomas over with disapproval. “You always get dirty as a pig… Get into the stream, or you’ll fail to rip it off when it dries.”

Thomas breathed heavily, with rattling and piercing within his chest at every deep breath. He had no strength to reply. He only turned his head to the stream but did not trust himself to walk there, in fear that his weakened legs fail him.

Oleg dismounted, came to the girl. She moved aside in fright, her eyes still full with horror. “Silly you,” Oleg persuaded. “It’s not me you should be afraid of, but that man in his iron shell. His heart is also shelled, I warn you!.. Let me adjust your leg. It got crooked all over.”

He felt her ankle, took it in both hands, kneaded, stretched, then moved it abruptly. The girl gave a thin squeak, like a small animal in its burrow, but even Thomas grasped at once that there was no displacement anymore, only a slight pain that would pass in a day or two.

Thomas dragged his feet to the stream, doing his best to keep a serene face and not to limp. The bank moved under his iron boots, he fell and slipped down on his back into the ice-cold water, raising a sparkling spray of water. The stream was small: his feet reached the other side, while his head remained on this one. Cold water flowed among the pieces of armor, soaked his knitted clothing, cooled his bruised body. Thomas felt like a solid bruise with protruding broken ribs and jagged fragments of bones.

He lay in the stream, chilled but enduring, though his teeth chattered. The sun was scorching and ruthless, the torrid heat made flies drop dead. Should one slip out from under a leaf, it snatched something in a flash of mica wings and hid again at once. The grass on the bank shrank and lay down in exhaustion, despite its roots reaching the ice-cold water.

He heard a strong voice above. “Sir Thomas! It’s no good. We have guests, and you keep fishing! Have you caught many?”

Thomas heard the voices of others. Earth crumbled under his iron elbows until he managed to stand up in the middle of the stream, With water spurting out of all the slits in his armor, he looked like a fountain in the royal palace. He felt a move in his bosom, put a hand there involuntarily. When he took it out, there was a small silvery fish jumping on his palm, with red fins and angry goggled eyes. Stunned, Thomas unclenched his fingers, and the fish leaped into the stream with a gurgle.

“That’s for half a day?” Oleg accused. “Oh… You meet the guests.”

“And you?”

“They crave for you.”

On the bank, three tents had appeared under the trees. People bustled about them. By the road, a whole string of decrepit carts was coming, pulled by docile horses and loaded with poor chattels, followed by some gaunt, ragged, almost unarmed pedestrians.

A stocky shaggy man, in a torn shirt and some old pants, stepped ahead to meet Thomas. The man had a short sword with wooden hilt on his rope belt. He was followed by two men of even poorer and plainer looks and the girl whom he’d rescued. Now she had a clean face, a burning red flower in her combed dark hair. She was all eyes watching Thomas, while whispering something briskly to the men.

The shaggy man gave Thomas a bow. “I’m a chieftain of the tribe. My name is Samoth. This is my grand-niece, lazy and sly, but we love our people and want no one dead… Thank you, mighty warrior! Please honor us by your presence. Be our guest.”

Thomas lifted his hands in dismay, glanced back at Oleg, seeking support. “Thank you. We’d like to, but we must go.”

“To the sea?” the chieftain asked.

“Yes.”

“And then? Constantinople?”

Thomas got surprised and anxious. “How do you know?”

“Everyone goes to Constantinople,” the chieftain replied calmly. “All the roads in the world go through this capital city. You are Frank. You came here through Constantinople — and have no way to escape it in your return.”

“True,” Thomas admitted. “But I have no time to lose.”

Samoth turned round to his assistants for a quick counsel, then spoke to the knight again. “If you leave today, you’ll stay ashore till next noon. There are no ports along this road, and the ship of Gelong — he’s my blood! — will not leave until holiday.”

“Which holiday?” Thomas asked.

“Of the Great Fish that saved our land,” Samoth answered solemnly.

Thomas opened his mouth to tell what he thought of Pagan customs but bit his tongue as he caught the wonderer’s mocking glance. Let them have their rites. These people will be christened by someone who has more time and less concerns.

“Thank you,” he replied, frowning. “But tomorrow we set out at dawn. What’s the name of your relative whom you mentioned?”

“Gelong. We’ll write him you are a friend of ours, and he’ll do his best to make your journey pleasant.”

Thomas glanced at their rags, gaunt faces, bare feet. “You can read and write?” he said with doubt.

The chieftain laughed, baring his yellow dented teeth. “All of us can! Only two nations in the world have to be literate to please their gods: we, great Uryupins, and those, what’s their… some Jews.”

People put their carts in a ring and stretched chains between them. As Thomas was explained, it was their protection against sudden attacks of brigands whom the roads and caravan ways, in the aftermaths of the war, were swarmed with. In the middle of the cart ring, they made fires, put up two scores of tents, poor and dirty, made of skin patches and old blankets. They cooked floury soup in caldrons over the fire, baked edible roots on coals. Thomas put out the meat and dainties that Merefans had given them for the trip and laughed, as he saw the eyes of children and adults widen with delight.

The rescued girl, her name was Iguanda, kept at Thomas’s side, watching him with loving eyes. Oleg smirked. A grand-niece, as he had calculated on his fingers, was a rather high degree of kinship on the maternal line (Uryupins and Jews used to count kinship that way). These people are poor, but they can be robbed of nothing. They look happy. What does a man need else?

Thomas was angry: he was left to drowning in a teacup again while the wonderer stayed apart, sitting by the fire, drinking sour wine with Uryupins, listening to their stories. Like water off a duck’s back! The Uryupins asked Thomas simple-mindedly whether he, a mighty warrior, was to join them. “Iguanda will marry you if you ask well. In due time, you can become a chieftain if you memorize all our customs!”

Irritated by those talks, Thomas stood up and walked away, around the camp. As a war professional, he noticed how the carts were put and arms disposed.

In the middle of the camp, he saw some ancient ruins almost buried in sand. He felt them, told the wonderer with surprise, “Looks like there had once been a sanctuary. Or even a capital city! These ragged men could have been an ancient and wise nation, like Chaldeans, but gone wild, couldn’t they? But what power could destroy these walls? They are of granite slabs, not burnt clay!”

“What a difference,” Oleg muttered.

“Big,” Thomas objected. “Once a blunder like that began such a… Saracens say Iblis was an angel who refused to bow to Adam. ‘You made me of fire and him of earth,’ he told God and was chucked down, head over heels, from the heaven. And what came of it? Since that time, Iblis hates men and keeps doing harm to them. You must remember what that damned one did to us!”

Oleg was surprised. “You are Christian! How can Iblis harm you? He’s a devil of Muslims!”

“How can he?” Thomas was insulted. It seemed to him that the wonderer suspected him in cowardice. “Just like Satan and his! He is Iblis, Devil, Beelzebub, Shaitan, Loki, Lucifer… I’m no prelate to know all his names!” He waved aside and went back to the nomads.

Oleg glanced with interest at Thomas taking a drinking bowl from the chieftain’s hands, saying something, touching his heart, then his forehead before he drunk from the bowl.

When there were two of them again, Oleg asked venomously, “Won’t you get it hot?”

“From whom?” Thomas wondered.

“From the god of yours.”

“What for?”

“For your bowing, I dare say, to the god of others.”

Thomas gave him a patronizing look, replied in a condescending voice. “Sir wonderer… you know much but not everything. Probably you haven’t travelled enough. A single god… a single face of God, I mean, is known to those who have never got off their stove, as you’d say. And I have been to many… And I know: when God comes to a new land, He, to be better understood, speaks their tongue, puts on their clothes, or even adopts a local name! Different people have different ways. Let them have it, if only those are ways of goodness, knightly valor, and justice. I know that we call the name of Christ, the Saracen — of Allah, some other people — of Buddha… but we call the same God! Besides, I don’t bow. I just salute to the Supreme Lord.”

PART II

Chapter 21

When the sky began to go dark, fires were lit even outside the defensive ring of carts. Camels and horses were grazed and guarded on the other side of the stream, while people had a poor but merry feast in the middle of the camp.

Thomas and Oleg pleaded tiredness and went into the tent allocated to them. Thomas took off his armor with relief, wanted to put his two-handed sword into a corner, but there were no corners, so he put it in the head of the bed, following the wonderer’s example. Oleg stripped off, lay down with enjoyment. “A ship tomorrow! I love sea. Though my people know mostly steppes, as they previously knew woods… Or maybe the sea laps in the blood of Slavs?”

“There’s only wine that laps in my head,” Thomas moaned. “How would they mount camels?”

“You can grip at the camel’s humps. But if you fall, the way down is longer!”

Thomas collapsed on the bed, tossed and turned for a while. He started to snore when the curtain was removed silently and Samoth entered the tent. The chieftain’s face was confused, he fiddled with his shirt torn on the breast. “Excuse me, dear guests, for I bother you, but we have news. Riders came from the Great Sultan.”

Thomas alerted, felt the bag with the cup in the head of his bed. Oleg said nothing, looked at the chieftain searchingly.

“They say two extremely dangerous outlaws have managed an escape from his prison.”

“Come on,” Thomas hurried him up.

“They described the appearance and distinctive marks of… Of the two of you.”

Thomas tensed and pulled his sword closer. “What did you tell them?” Oleg asked.

“What I could? But one of mine told them at once that both men whose marks fit are in our camp. As our guests. And the riders demanded us to give you up!”

“Come,” Thomas urged him on.

Samoth put his hand in his bosom, scratched himself there, caught something and squeezed in his strong nails. “I don’t think they came from Sultan,” he said in a dull voice.

“Why?” Thomas asked quickly.

“Sultan would not demand of those who are not his subjects. Neither his tributaries. Uryupins submit to no one! We are a free nation.” He burst with laughter, threw out his thin chest proudly. Thomas kept his hand on the sword hilt, glanced around, listened, cast slantwise glances at Oleg. “I exposed them at once. And they had to confess they came from afar but not from the Sultan. They said you were condemned to be quartered in Persia, burnt in India, buried alive in Moesia, lapidated in Judea, crucified in Constantinople… And to something in other places I don’t recall. Guilty of corruption of minors, sacrilege, incest, destruction of the temple of Silul…”

Thomas shook his head. “I’d need more than one life to do all of it! Maybe the wonderer did? He’s older and has been everywhere.”

Oleg thought for a while, scratched the back of his head warily. “Have I ever ruined the temple of Silul? At that time, I was on the other end of Lanka!”

The chieftain nodded with relief. “I knew they were exaggerating. Besides, preventing men from leading the life they want is none of our concerns. We never interfere the rites of others. Our gods put it clearly: you shall not impede!”

“Did they leave?” Thomas asked in a constrained voice. He kept his sword.

“They told us the reward for your heads. Stated in rupees, dinars, guldens, golden rings, ostrich feathers, ivory bone, even in some kunas… A sack of gold for each of you, to put it shortly.”

They felt a cold blow in the close hot air within the tent. A man would kill easily for a coin, even no gold one. And here are two sacks of gold flung out lightly by some powerful onewho wants the work done with utmost care and complaisance.

“The Seven?” Thomas said, gasping for air. Oleg nodded. “What did you decide?” Thomas asked Samoth in a heavy voice.

The chieftain looked aside, his face embarrassed. “Such important matters… when all the tribe is concerned… I should discuss with the elder. Even with all of my people.” He backed out from the tent.

Thomas jumped, straight from the bed, to a small window in canvas. It was filmed with yellow ox bladder. He saw adult Uryupins crowded at the far end of the camp, arguing lively. The sky was dark, studded with stars, but the Uryupins were lit by crimson flames, which made their faces look even more sulky and cruel. Men disappeared to come back with weapons. Due to some strange custom (or simply poverty), they wore swords and daggers unsheathed. Bare steel blades looked particularly ominous in the red light of fires.

“A sack of gold…” the wonderer drawled thoughtfully. “May we come out to them?”

Suddenly, Thomas gasped, his face went white. He looked through the dim film with terror, as though he saw a ghost. Oleg seized the sword, jumped up to his side.

Two well-clad warriors came out from a far tent and walked up to the cluster of arguing ragged men. One was broad-shouldered, remarkable by nothing but moving like a professional soldier. Another was… Gorvel! He was emaciated, his face maimed, a gaping wound in place of his left eye. Thomas did not recognize the other knight at once: his fire red beard had gone grey all over! Gorvel moved in the same brisk, predatory way, looked over the crowd vigilantly with his one remaining eye. He was clad in light armor: thin coat of mail down to his knees, his chest and back covered with plates of best Damask steel — and belted with a Khazar sword.

There were shouts in the crowd, but Thomas could not hear the words. After the false envoys of Sultan (and true ones of Secret Seven), Samoth the chieftain came out of the tent. He raised his arms to calm the men down, cried at the top of his voice and lungs, bending his chest forward, red with overstrain, “Men of the free nation of Uryupins! You know our guests, the envoys of Sultan, made a long way. With the only purpose to make us rich! Two sacks of gold for two heads of strangers! We can buy a herd of camels for each Uryupin man, luxurious tents and best food, slaves and carpets! A sack of gold means the best sabers of Damask, rich shops in any city and lands for us to buy… Think it over!”

“What will they do to them?” someone in the back rows cried out.

Gorvel bowed and stepped forward, raised his hand. He was almost a head taller than most Uryupins, and his strong voice, the only thing that had not changed about him, sounded imperious and stentorian. “We shall tie them up, for they are dangerous outlaws, then tie them to the legs of our camels and drag them behind as we ride. There’s sand everywhere, so they won’t get smashed up. If they even gorge with hot sand on the way and die, we don’t care! The Sultan told us to bring them, no matter dead or alive.”

The chieftain lifted his hands. “The envoy of Sultan, you’ve put it very understandable!” he approved.

Thomas came back to the bed, started to put his armor on hastily, clicking with clasps and rustling with belts. In those minutes, he grew more pinched than after fighting the bear. It is hard to fight men after you have enjoyed their hospitality!

A far voice of chieftain seemed to have reached his ears. “Men of the tribe, now you know what to do…”

In a hurry, Thomas slapped his helmet on, tightened the belt. Far from the tent, there was a happy roar of hundreds of mighty throats, approaching and growing louder, mixed with the trample of feet, merry squeals, clang of steel, as if someone was hitting his shield feelingly by the sword hilt.

Oleg stood by the window, his face strange. His lips stretched, as though to whistle. “Oh dear… Sir Thomas, just look at it!”

Thomas snatched the sword and rushed up, feeling the beastly strength back to his tired body. The sword seemed stuck to his palm, his heart thumped with all its might, forcing up fury for a fight.

Through the window, he saw a huge excited mob coming towards their tent. Uryupins thrust clenched fists overhead, raised swords, sabers, and plain sticks, two or three men swung ropes. In the very middle of the crowd, there were Gorvel and his assistant: stripped off their armor and helmets, tied up tightly, their clothes torn. People spat and flung clods of mud at the them as they walked. Gorvel’s face was covered with blood, his grey beard matted into a puny goatee, his front teeth missing. His assistant had large swollen bruises under his eyes.

They were dragged past the tent, in which Thomas and Oleg stayed put. One of the carts was removed to throw the captives outside the camp. Men came running up with two fast annoyed camels. The mob yelled, bustled, and hooted. The captives were flung down on the ground, tied with long ropes to the camels. In a hurry, the broad-shouldered soldier was tied to both camels at once: his left leg to one and his right to another. The mob roared with laughter and cheers. In the turmoil, someone fetched the camels a stick. The animals gave a hollow roar, raised their hind legs and ran, dragging the captives. There was a tree in hundred steps ahead. With disgust and horror, Thomas saw the camels running apart to pass on both sides of the tree!

He turned away at the very last moment, gritted his teeth, closed his eyes tightly. Gorvel was dragged by a single camel, but the way was rocks, snags, and dry clods of earth, and the humpbacked runner kept accelerating his speed, in fright of his master who was running with shrill screams.

Thomas gave a jump when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. The wonderer forced the knight to turn his back, started to unclasp his armor. Oleg’s face looked made of stone. “They offered it themselves!”

“Yes, but…”

“Who comes for wool is at risk of getting shorn. Strip off, quickly! When the chieftain comes, you’ll burn with shame.”

“I am burning!”

“To be honest, I also have, as Christians put it, sinned in my mind.”

Thomas dropped the pieces of armor in a haste, listening to the far shouts and rustling sounds of feet. Through the window, they could see a dusty cloud moving away after the running camels. Now Thomas knew what a fast speed racecamels could gather. “Every man would be dead in two hundred steps… In two miles the last!”

“I hope he would,” Oleg said, frowning. “Last time I left him to death but allowed a chance… A tiny one! But he used it! Or… someone helped him.”

Thomas recalled Gorvel’s maimed face, empty socket, grey beard. “The Secret Seven?”

“Someone of their nearest.”

“Do they have magic?” Thomas asked suddenly.

“Many things can be done without it,” Oleg evaded.

Thomas’s face turned stone. “I see,” he said slowly, as though rolling heavy stones at the same time. “But if they have magic, why don’t they simply take the cup from us? What am I against magic?”

Oleg was silent for a long while, with his head down. Suddenly it seemed to Thomas that the wonderer’s motionless face livened up a bit, his tired wrinkles smoothed. He sounded exhausted but strong. “Once they wanted to lead the world by the way of magic… And fought apostates: the knowers. Fought them fiercely, ruthlessly, but their strength was fading. When the supreme magician, the head of Secret Seven, great Fagim perished in fight with… er… one of the apostate knowers, the remaining Secret Ones turned to knowing. Since that time, knowing is often called science…”

“They gave up magic?!” Thomas exclaimed with delight.

Oleg smirked unkindly, feasting his eyes on the beautiful knight with his sky blue eyes. “Gave up… for others. For the mankind! That was what I strove for. But they retained magic for own use.”

Thomas felt creepy, as he noticed the strange slip. He shivered. “Will they… use it?”

“To take the cup? Yes, if other ways to get it fail them,” Oleg replied thoughtfully. “If they have an urgent need to do it. Urgent! That will make them break their own rules. But I can’t fathom why do they need it?”

He peered intently in the side where the dust cloud had vanished in the night. His fists were clenched, knuckles white. Thomas did not dare to ask what exactly the wonderer had striven for and why he spoke in such a way as though he’d fought the invincible Secret Ones before.

Early in the next morning, they parted with the hospitable Uryupins. Thomas couldn’t help confessing and begging pardon for the sin he’d committed in his mind.

The chieftain smirked, made a broad gesture, as if to embrace all of his people. “Why do you think we are that poor? Just because we are honest! But all the gold on earth is no match for the magic gold my people have in their souls. Why would we sell honor and conscience for two sacks of plain gold?”

They embraced at parting. Thomas whipped his stallion hastily: he could not bear to see the accusing brown eyes of Iguanda. If now he saved her, he should have taken her. She would rather be eaten by the bear than by sorrow for the mysterious knight from the far North…

When the tribe was left far behind and the horses took a slow pace, Thomas pounded his thigh with his metal fist several times, while speaking in a tone of persuasion. “There are men in this world! There are. Even in the bloody and treacherous Pagan world. There are!”

Oleg smirked. “Have you doubted it? Your god didn’t sacrifice his life in vain, did he? He must have also thought there were men in the world. Though everyone was Pagan then!”

Thomas said nothing, unwilling to keep the conversation up. This Pagan’s words often smelled of mockery even when he spoke very seriously.

Oleg was frowning. He would often glance at the sand under the horse hooves or look around. For some reason, he made a semicircle and, once the sand dunes hid him from view, whipped his horse and dashed on like a whirlwind. Astonished, Thomas could barely keep up. But the wonderer did nothing in vain, so Thomas drew out his sword.

They saw three mounted men who rode hastily, watching the tracks on the sand. Thomas saw the hoof prints of their horses from a distance. His fury boiled up, like water in a bowl on red-hot coals. “Damn it!” he said fiercely. “Would we ever get rid of spies?”

Before the wonderer could give a signal, Thomas gripped his sword and, with a terrible yell, dashed onto the riders. They were too busy with the tracks buried quickly by sand and wind, so they failed to hear the knight’s furious shout at once. When they looked back, shrieked and started to urge their horses, it was too late. A destrier can develop a colossal speed within a short distance. He came up with the back horse, hit it with own body, toppling the rider into the sand. The second rider was reached by Thomas’s sword: a flat side of it, but the blow sent the man flying like a useless old pot thrown away.

The third one spurred his horse. He would have escaped, but Thomas heard helplessly a ringing blow of iron on iron. The rider jerked his hands up, jumped in his saddle and collapsed on the ground. His helmet, knocked down by the arrow, fell on the other side of the horse.

“We got you, crows!” Thomas yelled with gloat. He saw a dark shadow, some likeness of a ghostly bat, sweeping over one man. Thomas was sure that was a devil taking the soul of the sinner, as the man had been slashed by sword from the back of his head to the middle of spine.

They tied up the rest two, flung them into the circle of the grass trampled by horses. Oleg lit the fire at once, started to gather wood. He was sullen and thoughtful, red hair falling on his forehead, inhuman green eyes looking with enmity.

Thomas smiled contentedly. There’s no honor in defeating the weak, but their captives look strong warriors. One has malevolent sparkles in his eyes, his hands twitch, as he tests the rope for strength. Another lies still like a snake in hide, before it jumps. He seems capable of keeping silence even if tortured.

Oleg brought an armful of twigs and muttered. Thomas could not hear the words, but the twitching captive asked anxiously, “What this savage wants?”

Thomas shrugged. “He asked whether it’s time to eat you. I answered it’s too early.”

The captive let out a squeak and passed out. The other one, who had been silent and motionless, begged in a shaky voice, “Good sire, you are Christian… Please protect us!”

“No need,” Thomas comforted him. “He’s forbidden by his Pagan faith to eat people under the rays of all-seeing sun. He’s a fire worshipper!”

The captive went trembling all over, his head tossed in fright. The great orange ball had passed zenith and was rolling down with relief. The captive gave such a start that made him bob. His face turned grey. “That means… we are safe till evening only?”

“You are,” Thomas assured. He yawned and stretched himself with joy, feeling his joints turn and crunch faintly. “If only the sky is not covered with clouds… but that’s rare in this land.”

The captive looked with terror over the knight’s head, where a small cloud, as white and fluffy as a kitten, sprang up and started to grow.

Oleg made the fire blaze up, fetched more twigs. The captives saw him asking the knight of something and the knight looking warily at the close hedge of thick bushes. “What he wants now?” the captive asked hastily.

“He’s impatient. Says the cloud is too slow. Asks me to help him to make a shelter of branches, so that he could drag you there himself.”

The captive trembled. “I’m sure you won’t help him.”

Thomas knitted his brows menacingly. “Do you mean I’m an idler?”

“No, I don’t,” the man babbled in panics, almost weeping, “but this savage…”

“He is my friend at arms,” Thomas replied proudly. He got up with dignity. “Though a savage, he saved my life more than once! You’ve shamed me when you pointed at my self-love and laziness that don’t befit a noble knight. Certainly I should help my companion… do him this small favor. After that, I shall spend a couple of hours fishing at the bank. They say fish is tender and delicious here! I’ll show you… Oh, I see. Well, it’s the final destination of everyone.”

* * *

After that, nothing hampered their way to the coast of Black Sea. The Greeks called it Pontus Euxine, which meant “the hospitable sea”, or the inhospitable sea in other times. Many other nations inhabiting its shores named it simply “the Russian sea”, for its waves being crowded with Russian ships long since. Ruses traded and robbed, carried goods and people by sea, made plundering raids on the opposite coast, where local tribes, nations, and states changed often. Russian pirates, forders, free daredevils, Cossacks, and other brigand men gave their forays oversea an ironic name of “going for winter coats.”

All the way Thomas neighed, as he recalled the captives vying with each other in crying out everything they knew, selling and betraying their masters, promising to be good slaves, only to avoid their entrails being pulled out and devoured for them to see… The wonderer rode silent and thoughtful: the captives had told nothing worthy.

Easily, they found Gelong, the shipmaster. He was fierce with hangover, shaggy and violent, his crew avoided him. At first, he went barging on Thomas, being filled with bad blood, a happy beast in presentiment of a good fight, but Oleg hurried to interfere. He told Gelong they had come from Samoth, his blood, as his best friends and comrades who’d been drinking with him the day before — and the savage beast of a shipmaster changed to a beaming, happy man who embraced both of them, clapped on shoulders. Then he wheeled round to the trembling cook who was looking out from behind a bundle of ropes, roared in a stentorian voice, “Wine to the bottom cabin! Lots of wine!”

Thomas heaved a sigh. “We’ll be going along the shore,” Oleg cheered him up. “If we get drunk, we’ll feel less of the rolling, as our heads swing and our bellies gurgle…”

They had to sell the horses. There was hardly enough space aboard for two men, and that they owed to Gelong’s cordiality. Oleg praised Thomas for his wise deed, advised him to keep saving all maidens from beasts, as all of his great predecessors had done: Targitai, Perseus, Ivasik, Beowulf, Sigurd… “They also used to receive a good reward. Sometimes a double one if the girl contributed to it.” Thomas scowled and snarled. He was sad of parting with his destrier, whom he’d stormed the Tower of David and climbed the walls of Jerusalem with.

With bags on their backs, they came aboard. At once, the sailors raised a fore-and-aft sail that was strange to Thomas. In the northern seas, a sail is seldom in use. Rowing is more relied upon, and if even they raise the sail, it is a straight and square one. But the oars of Gelong’s ship were in disorder, and her crew started drinking straight off. To be more exact, they resumed doing it. Only three or four men kept a lazy eye on the ship.

The wind was even, fresh and steady. In case of need, sailors would turn the sail deftly: a skill not known to Vikings. The master informed they would arrive to Constantinople, the capital of Roman Empire, in a week. Thomas puffed up like a little owl, ready to argue that Rome was the capital, but Oleg intruded and took the conversation away from a slippery road. In fact, the Great Roman Empire used to have two capitals, both Rome and Constantinople, for a long time, and its sigil, the proud eagle, was portrayed with two heads to transmit the idea of Empire having a single body and two heads that would not live without each another. The Western and the Eastern Roman emperors (the latter often named basileus) did not make any difference, but the fact that the single Christian Church had divided into the western and the eastern branch did. That difference was still tiny but Oleg had seen much of the world. He’d seen peoples who split amicably but began terrible bloody wars two or three generations later.

Once, in a vague dream sent by either gods or his soul who managed a look into the distant future, Oleg saw the emblem of the Russian Empire: a two-headed eagle as a symbol of Russian princes and, later, Russian tsars, but could not fathom how that was possible. Will Rome come and capture Slavic lands? Or will Russian hosts finally achieve the long-lasting dream of their princes and take Tsargrad with its lands for themselves and their children?

They shared the cramped cabin under the steer box with three more men: two merchants and a fat idle boy. Those three would enter no conversations but turn away, hiding their faces. They wore the clothing of common men but their faces and hands were too white and well-groomed. Thomas winced, irritated by the company of sleek traders (if those were traders). He spent most of the daytime on deck, watching dolphins. Twice he saw the huge oblique comb of a sea serpent, but it vanished before he could call the wonderer.

Once a ghostly ship sailed by. The sailors made much ado, shouting of a trouble brewing. Thomas moved away with disgust, lest their sweaty unwashed bodies touch him in their bustling about. In wars and travels, he had seen not only ghostly ships but whole ghostly cities, not to mention castles, towers, and minarets! And ghosts of caravans, oases, and lone men could be seen in hot Arabia almost every day.

Oleg, attracted by the clamor, climbed on the upper deck in haste. “What’s up?”

“A vision,” Thomas replied sarcastically. “For all to see. But, unlike you, they neither exult not thank gods. And what do you think? Can a vision do any harm?”

“Surely it can,” Oleg replied confidently. “To another vision.”

“I see… But that’s a concern of theirs. Let them fight each other as they like. But can they harm live men?”

“Definitely! If live men get lost in contemplation, treating it as a circus, and let their ship crash into rocks or another ship.”

The ship sailed without letting the shore out of sight. In times Thomas could make out the ruins of ancient towers or remnants of old cities. That fertile land had seen many nations and states changing each other. Thomas had heard, with half an ear, only about the most powerful of them: the Hittite Kingdom, Lidia, Midia, Ahmenids. There had been the empire of Alexander the Great, then the Seleucids, the kingdom of Pontus, Pergamum, the possessions of Romans and, at last, the state of Seljukids, which was destroyed a year before by a mighty Crusader host from far northern lands. Nations rise like flowers in spring, their tongues get mixed with the remnants of previous ones and diluted, then they fall under the pressure of some newcomers. Last year, the warriors of Christ came here for the first time. Surrounded by alien tribes, they hurry to raise strong castles and fortresses… Will the Crusaders resist?

All the way to Constantinople, the ship was followed by dolphins who jumped in waves and looked with gleaming curious eyes. The sailors told Thomas that dolphins had once been men who went into the sea to avoid war and grief and live happily ever after, with only a vague memory of kinship that attracts them to people. Thomas tossed fish and slices of bread to dolphins, thinking seriously of whether he would become a careless dolphin to escape the bitter human life where a man had to take each step by fight. He failed to resolve it at once, even as he recalled the immortal mages following his tracks and the unknown traps waiting ahead.

As the ship rounded a cape, some golden sparkles flashed in the sun far ahead. Oleg heard Thomas sigh loudly at his side. The knight’s face was excited. Those gleaming sparkles are the domes of Christian temples, each one covered with twenty or thirty poods of pure gold. And Constantinople has thousands of such domes. The city was known as Tsargrad to pirates and Varangians, to Artania, Slavia, Kujavia, and then Kievan Rus’, Novgorod, to princedoms of Chernigov…

Probably, Oleg thought with a thumping heart, it is the oldest city in the world. All the caravan ways pass here, through the joint of two giant continents: Europe and Asia. Since long ago, there had been roaming tribes whose names sank into oblivion. Each of them changed the name of the city, which was burnt down, destroyed, and rebuilt again. Nations would be born, get old and die, their tongues dying with them, but the city kept standing on the bank of the channel, as she was needed to everyone.

The place was visited by Hittites, Macedonians, wild men of Pannonia, Italy, Scythia, Hyperborea. Everyone who came from north had to follow the same path, which their feet had trampled into a broad trodden road, and the one walking from south had another path, but both of them were doomed to meet here. By the will of gods, all roads follow the folds of earth. At the cross of those two paths, a city emerged. It had changed many names, but the first one to be remembered was the last but one: Byzantium. When Constantine, the Roman emperor, was looking for a place to build his new capital, he found no better place than the ancient Byzantium, so the city was given a new name: Constantinople, which meant “the city of Constantine.”

The Emperor had the city broadened immediately. For a start, he blocked the neck of land between Europe and Asia by a tall stone wall, then raised hundred and forty large battle towers on it, to protect the wall, to house soldiers, their weapons and provisions. The wall that fenced the new capital off the sea was guarded by eighty more towers.

Inside the walls, Constantine built palaces, fortresses, luxurious houses for high officials, massive barracks for his imperial guard, sumptuous temples (those were then ruined to raise churches, no less sumptuous, on their solid foundations), high guest mansions and storehouses. He also built prisons and had broad cellars dug under them: ordinary for plain prisoners, secret for particularly dangerous ones, and the most secret for the personal enemies of the Emperor. The secret torture chambers looked at the bay, and dead bodies in sacks, with boulders tied to their legs, were shook off into the water. Near the most secret torture chambers, there were secret treasury rooms, also graded by accessibility: the most important ones could only be visited by Emperor himself.

During his last visit, Oleg had noticed how thoroughly Constantine had been decorating the capital city, how ruthlessly he ravaged his other lands, driving the best masters and craftsmen together into the old Byzantium — and how fast Byzantium was changing to majestic Constantinople, as polished slabs of marble and basalt, statues of gods and heroes, centaurs and chimeras had been brought there from all around.

Constantinople looked unassailable. The old Byzantium had got shy and lost in the magnificence of the capital city, turned into one of its quarters, neither the poorest nor the richest one. It was Agnir for thousand years, Oleg thought bitterly, and Kerch for the next thousand and Komonsk for the following ten centuries and Byzantium for the same time and a bit more. For a thousand of years till today, it has been known as Constantinople.

His shoulders flinched, as though of a sudden blow of the cold northern wind. What name will it get for the next ten centuries? Which nations will come to crush its present inhabitants: New Greeks, a mixture of Slavic migrants and remnants of neighboring savage tribes who took a proud name of Romans but their neighbors call them Romays[15] and later will know them as Byzantines? Or the pointless destruction of one nation by another will be stopped someday?

Thomas watched closely the growing walls, his eyes glittered with professional interest. “No one, for thousand years, has taken this stronghold by storm… Have you been inside?”

“I have,” Oleg replied. His voice sounded strangely muffled. Thomas turned to him in surprise. Oleg nodded. “Yes, I have been there! Both inside and outside.”

“I see a wonderer’s life is good,” Thomas sighed. “You can get where a man with sword is not allowed.”

The wonderer’s face stiffened as if he tried to recall something buried deep in his memory. Thomas did not dare to break the silence: in times, the wonderer looked very mysterious. The knight would take no notice of such trifles before he’d been dragged by life across different countries, peoples, and customs. Though that had only made the Christian hold in his soul stronger, he learnt to feel the souls of others. Even the souls doomed to Hell’s fires for their disbelief in Christ.

Oleg came back from his brooding. “If the Secret Seven keep their whim to get your cup, a man of theirs shall be waiting in Constantinople,” he warned Thomas. “This gate from Asia to Europe can be escaped by no one!”

“There are more people in Constantinople than ants in a forest! We shall get lost to view.”

“We shan’t if they put a man at the moorings.”

Thomas put his palm on the sword hilt. Oleg knew it without looking back: hundreds of times had he seen this gesture, habitual for Thomas in every trouble.

“Whom are you going to slash? There are lots of people on the pier.”

“May we disguise?” Thomas suggested warily.

Oleg gave a long look over his proud figure, distinctive at any distance in his gleaming armor. “How?” he asked with sullen irony.

“Er… I could, though I hate it, turn my shield with other side as we go ashore. I can even put it into my bag! We are searched by my arms: a sword and a lyre on starry field, aren’t we? There’s no point changing it: The Secret Ones should be experts in heraldry, as it is studied everywhere, first of reading and writing, as the most important of sciences. So they will know any move by the starry field of the shield, get the meaning of it…”

“A good disguise,” Oleg approved, “but let’s forget it. The Emperor has tens of thousands spies in his service. They meet merchants, pilgrims, beggars, settlers, and sailors on the city gates to ransack their belongings and levy a duty, but their most important job — the one for which they get second salary from a secret pocket — is to watch for the second face of they who look plain merchants or beggars. For their true face. The city is penetrated constantly by spies and scouts, assassins and agents of remote kings or robber gangs. Almost all of them are got to their bottom by sophisticated secret service men easily — but they’re allowed into the city all the same, under a covert supervision, to find out all of their links and aims and accomplices. Often they’re allowed out of the city too, with no harm done to them, if that serves some distant purpose of the Empire. And those purposes can be more far-going and sinister than the naive and straight-minded kings of young western realms can even imagine!”

The ship dropped anchor in half a mile from the shore. There were hundreds of other ships, large and small, rocking on waves while new ships were coming and light fast boats with strong-shouldered rowers bustled about.

Gelong waited patiently for a port official to come by one of those boats. A stout man, but not a fat one, he walked to the bridge, accompanied by the shipmaster. His mates slipped into the holds, like nimble rats, to leave the two of them in private. The official and the master studied the list of goods thoroughly. The official marked some of them as forbidden. The master started to argue, pointing out those things had been allowed the last time, but the official remarked reasonably that even mountains and seas change over time. His assistants came out to collate the lists, and there was arguing again. Gelong was going dark. When the assistants, all together, turned their backs, he sighed and poured a handful of golden coins into the official’s pocket. Thomas winced. The Empire is rotten through! However, the duty became smaller at once and the official left, while his assistant stayed aboard to serve as a pilot.

The ship approached the close mooring cautiously, choosing her way among other ships. Thomas stood in his full armor, feeling his sword. “A rotten place,” he said with disapproval. “That’s a pity… It’s so beautiful! The Holy Bible says of many kingdoms: Babylon, Nineveh, Assyria. Where are they now? Once while crossing a desert, I saw some ruins of towers and buildings in the sand. Sometime palaces had been rising there and gardens growing and splendid birds singing… And I walked knee-deep in hot sand, only deserts around, and almost squealed as a pig with sorrow for the lost beauty. Though I knew the city must have been inhabited by wicked Pagans, as it died thousands of years before Christ!”

Oleg peered intently at the approaching moorings crowded with people, carts, bright litters, horses in sumptuous attires, guards with gleaming blades. “To save everything means to leave no space for the new. You’d better watch no beautiful towers but ugly people. Your arrival is already known to all the spies of Seven.”

“Do you think they’ll try to take it straight on the moorings?”

“Be ready,” Oleg advised. “I think this city will make your greatest challenge.”

Thomas’s cheeks went white, his eyes lost reverie and started running over the motley crowd. The ship edged her way between high-sided galleys, a bridge was thrown to the land. Thomas and Oleg were almost the first to come ashore: straight after the merchants and strange young boy who, all the three, were twisting with unfathomable fear.

Chapter 22

The taverns and brothels in the port are swarmed with low-class spies who are paid an extra salary by prefects, questers, komeses, praetors, or inquisitors — everyone wants to know secrets. The secret messages are valued very much as a foundation of any policy. Should a spy conceal, soften, or distort even a bit of it, his poor lot is to be eaten by crabs at the bottom of the Golden Bay. They would leave only a bare skeleton with the stone tied to legs.

The higher class of spies would report to the Emperor himself, allowed to him as they show a secret sign. There were spies of double or triple subordination. But the most sophisticated ones, as Thomas felt now, were servants to Secret Seven first, and only then — to the Emperor and other rulers of limited power.

Own spies were kept even by eunuchs, whom the Emperor’s palace was stuffed with. Eunuchs were considered to be as free of sin as angels: they had no sex, while Satan was thought of as a man in his full strength, eager to visit women at hot southern nights and doing it at every occasion. Oleg glanced askance at gloomy Thomas, thinking with a jeer that was a weak point of Christianity, a defect in it. Eunuchs inspire disgust. People should better not be reminded that castrates are made in the image and likeness of angels, or a common man will find the devil more fathomable or even closer to himself.

There were flagstones underfoot and houses of grey stone, five or six floors tall, on both sides. They could not see the end of the street. In places, it was crossed by other broad roads. Every step ahead made Thomas shrink, so enormous was the city, so rich in people so different that no one looked twice neither at him nor at the wonderer in his open wolfskin jack, his bare breast wide and bronzed.

People seemed to be loafing their time away, though many were purposeful in their hurry, elbowing and cursing passers-by. The noise and clamor made ears ringing. At the foot of the thick stone walls, warmed up by morning sun, children were crawling and playing. They chinked copper coins against the walls, measured the way to them with their fingers stretched, quarreled and scuffled in adult way: spitting in each other’s eyes and shouting out who of them, noble Romays, was in truth a filthy Greek, a dump Slav, or a mean Jew.

They often met beggars, cripples, sick men. Once they bumped into a whole procession of ragged paupers who moaned in different voices. Thomas felt sick at the sight of their huge sores, dripping with pus and swarmed with flies. They turned into another street. The wonderer seemed no stranger to the city: as they went, he told Thomas the names of taverns, their prices, ways, and food quality.

Thrice they crossed market squares, each big enough to house the whole tribe of Herulians or Gepids. Merchants reached for Thomas from their tents, adorned with gold and silk, or from behind their counters heaped up with goods. He was invited, persuaded, begged to buy, seized by armor, tucked things in hands.

Stunned and tired, as though after a good fight or a stormy night, they got to the coaching inns. For some reason, Oleg passed by the first three, despite exhausted Thomas tugging him by sleeve. Near the fourth inn, the wonderer stopped, looked around closely, counted horses at the tethering pole but dragged Thomas farther on. They only entered the gate of the sixth inn on their way.

They had dinner in the tavern on the ground floor, then went upstairs: their room was on the fifth. Oleg lay down and lapsed into reflection, but Thomas stood by the window for a long while, with enviable stamina, still in armor. “Even streets here paved with flagstones! And so smoothly, one by one! And people! As many as ants in a sunny day… after the rain.”

“The capital of the world,” Oleg grunted.

“Not to everybody,” Thomas told back at once, with a faint note of jealousy. “For us, the capital of the world is Rome.”

“And the mouth of Don… London, I mean? Does it submit?”

“It’s a different thing.” Thomas was insulted. “Rome is the capital of all the world save Britain.”

“Take care not to say this in Kiev,” Oleg warned.

“Why?”

“Kievins bow to no one but their gods.”

Thomas said nothing. The wonderer was a true friend and a reliable companion in everything save faith. His stupid Paganism. And he was a good company: never imposing his opinion, never arguing, always immersed in own thoughts. He would almost never begin a conversation. He seems to dwell in some other world and come to this one only when called.

The knight came to another window and lingered, watching the huge tall towers that flanked the strait of sea closely. “Is there a chain stretched between them? To block the sea for night?”

“Only in hard times,” Oleg assured. “Now the chain is at the bottom of the sea. But I feel its huge winches will soon have to move… I remember times when the chain stayed up even for daytime…”

He smiled to his far memories, while Thomas wondered what the winches to stretch the monstrously thick chain across the sea should be like. Each one as large as a mountain? Which fairy smiths could have made such things?

The wonderer lay on the bed on his back, his eyes closed, as though in peaceful sleep, but his right hand fingered the charms without stop, felt them, lingered at this or that figure… Thomas turned grim. If the wonderer is right and the cup is pursued by the Secret Seven Lords of the World, there is hardly a chain to keep them away.

In the evening, Thomas decided to visit the crusader knights: there were two knightly orders that occupied a whole quarter in Constantinople. Oleg winced but said nothing against and went for supper alone. Before leaving the room, he powdered the threshold with dust and put some hairs out of his wolfskin into the door slit.

Thomas looked at the wonderer anxiously, came back to the bed and put a dagger on his belt, in supplement to the huge sword he had on his back. He was in full armor, but the city streets were strolled by people of far stranger and odder looks: from half-naked and all but naked slaves of southern lands to northern islanders clad in furs.

Oleg sat at the corner table alone, trying to keep all the room within eyesight. He saw men drinking and having fun: hired warriors, small chieftains, of both far and close tribes, who had come to sign peace pacts. Merchants and traders were also there, feasting openly, but the flauntiest revelers were unremarkable types, as grey as mice. They seemed unable to pose any danger even to a chicken and taking care of nothing but themselves. Oleg was the only one to see (and the innkeeper, probably, the only to know) their true nature. Those men were a fear even to the imperial generals, intrepid and hardened in many battles. They were the spies of basileus.

“Are you bored, chieftain?” A young foxy girl with bright make-up, in short frivolous dress with low neck, leaned on his shoulder, pretending a stumble. With interest, both professional and plain woman’s, she cast a keen glance over his muscular body, bare shoulders.

Oleg clapped on her hand. Her tender white skin knew no work. He nodded at the bench near him. “Sit down. What will you drink?”

She sat down willingly, laughed, baring her dazzling white teeth. “I see you have been to our sumptuous pigpen before, chieftain?”

“You see?” Oleg was surprised.

“Of course I do! You neither gaped nor jumped up to paw me straight away… As though you have known all of it for ages.”

“I’ve been here before,” he confirmed. “By the way, my name is Oleg.”

“And mine is Helen. I’m working here.”

“Do you have a good day today?”

She wrinkled her nose prettily. “Not really. Clients are either poor or greedy or too… repulsive.”

He gave her a sharp glance. “Are you capricious?”

She laughed merrily, screw up her eyes archly. “It depends. If I have a chance, why not? In other cities, one has to accept everyone, even drunken soldiers, and Constantinople has thousand merchants a day coming through each of her gates. I have had no one today and would like to start the day with pleasure.”

Oleg waved for a servant who hurried up to them with a jug of wine and two glasses. “You start a day when I finish it,” he told Helen.

“I’m a night bird,” she said easily. “But I hope this time you won’t finish it that early!”

He took a sip of wine. He had grasped the concealed meaning of her arch words: the sinister one. He poured her some wine, observing her manner to take a glass, touch its edge with her lips, to sit and put her legs. At the same time, he said her words again and again in his mind, making her voice softer and louder, changing it to bass or descant. He felt something different about her, other than the nature of a plain prostitute. She constructed too correct sentences, her pronunciation was clear, she was even too beautiful for a wench in such a place. Smart and good-looking whores do not linger at harbor taverns, yielding to drunken sailors on a pitch of rotten hay. They make their way up fast, some of their sort have even become empresses, like the peerless Theodora.[16] May this beauty be just beginning her way?

She chattered, plucked the tightest grapes from big bunches, enjoyed her sharp clean teeth into a huge peach. It sprinkled with juice, she laughed. Her eyes were shiny, her cheeks had a natural high color under the rough layer of rouge.

When the jug of wine was half-empty (though Helen drank very little of it), Oleg tossed a golden dinar on the table and got up. “Let’s go?”

She rose to her feet lightly. “Why not?”

Oleg, tensed as though he was to plunge into cold water, noticed a strange stealing look of the innkeeper and — in the big motley crowd, gobbling and jabbering — two sullen merchants who fell silent at once and moved their heads together to follow Oleg and the girl with slanting glances.

They went up, the broad wooden stairs squeaked. Oleg let Helen go first, as though to feast his eyes on her seductive body and inflame his lust. He laughed loudly and joked while watching the curves of her slender body, listening to music of her moves, spotting her lithe muscle, well-hid by roundish feminine shapes. Helen (he was no fool to think it was real name) did not look a girl ascending from the very bottom to the bedroom of basileus. She was evidently born atop, brought up under the care of nurses, tutors, masseurs, doctors, and experts on the codes of behavior of courtiers, small folk, and barbarian chieftains.

In his small room, she shot a quick glance at the window, touched the hilt of the huge sword, which stood at the corner near the head of the bed, with interest.

The window shutters were quivering, the cold night air bursting into the room. Helen shivered. Oleg made a step towards the window to close it. “Wait!” Helen cried briskly. “I have a better idea!”

Smiling seductively and looking in his eyes, she started to untie her broad silk girdle with deliberately slow moves. Her plump ripe lips curved in a promising smile, her eyes laughed. Oleg smiled back to her: he had grasped the whole thing of it.

Helen came to the window and, with the same slowed moves, tied her girdle on the hooks to prevent shutters from flying open. Oleg feasted his eyes on her lissome body, slim waist, wide hips seated on long slender legs — especially because she was expecting such an intent look and fast breath from him.

“I think that will be better…” she said, still smiling, as she turned to him. Even a fool who failed to see her girdle can now have a good view of her figure in the lit window.

Oleg sat down on the edge of the bed, the one closer to the door, to miss no rustle outside. Helen stood near the window. “What have you been before, Helen?” he asked peacefully.

Surprise flickered in her beautiful eyes. “Do you want a talk?”

“Don’t you?”

“Surely I do! But I heard you, northern guests, behave like beasts and bed a woman straight off!”

Oleg smiled. “Do you want me to prove the opposite? To chat with you of philosophy all the night long?”

She burst with merry laughter. Her pretty head jerked up, baring the beautiful white neck made for kisses. “It would be a severe disappointment to me!”

“Come to me then,” Oleg called. “Let’s make love and discuss philosophy in pauses… if there are any.”

She nodded, laughter still flickering in her radiant eyes. Slowly, she stepped to Oleg and, standing in front of him, started to strip off her dress. Oleg kept on his face the look of admiration for her young slender body, but he was all on tips of his ears. He heard wooden floor boards in the corridor creaking louder and nearer.

Helen also heard it. Her smile grew broader, her eyes opened wider, more seductively. She had her undershirt off in hand and looked teasingly at him.

“Someone coming to the door!” Oleg told her quickly. “Get behind that door, quickly!”

She opened her eyes wide. “What’s there?”

“A closet,” he replied impatiently. “A crumpled space but you won’t spend much time in. Just until I get rid of my friend and companion. It must be him.”

With an indignant look, she made her way to the closet door, sniffing, moving her hips in a provocative way, her undershirt still in hand. Like a marrowbone before the nose of a dog who’s led to the knacker’s, Oleg thought/

She vanished behind the door. Oleg latched the entrance, threw his cloak hastily on his bow and quiver, fingered the hilts of knives.

There was a loud knock on the door. Oleg hurried to spill wine over the table and scatter the remnants of food. “What the devil there at night?” he shouted in a hoarse angry voice.

“What night, dear?” a merry, cheerful male voice cried back through the door.

Oleg walked to the door slowly, stamping and dragging his feet. He dawdled with the latch, grumbled loudly, posing as drunken barbarian. Standing in the corridor, there was a stocky man in light armor tempered by winds and sea. He had a broad smile on his face, his teeth white and shiny, but his eyes took in the whole room at a glance over Oleg’s shoulder: the spilled wine, picked bones, an amphora lying on its side and another one standing on the windowsill.

Oleg stepped aside, reeled, asked the visitor in with a broad gesture. The man entered eagerly, with his broad smile. He was merry, full of strength and health, belted with a short sword in ornate scabbard.

“I only have wine of Chios,” Oleg told him hoarsely. “Would you?”

“I’d rather have mead,” the visitor replied after a brief pause. “Or a gulp of beer.”

The barrel of dark beer was at the closet where Thomas had thrust it. “Drink wine,” Oleg grunted. “It won’t kill you. Or get out.”

“Well, I’ll have wine,” the guest agreed easily. He swept the crumbs off the bench with disgust and sat down at it. “My name is Fish. I’m a professional soldier, a mercenary. I left the legion for a better job. Now, for instance, I’m at command of three score of cutthroats who I chose myself. This house is surrounded by them. Reckless lads — and skilled, which is more. I know people, so I have picked the best men, believe it! As we are paid high, that was no problem. They won’t let a fly out, not to speak of you and your friend. By the way, where’s he?”

He cast a keen glance around, which stopped on the closet door. Oleg scratched himself lazily, hemmed, as if he had a difficulty to digest Fish’s words. Suddenly, his fist darted ahead. Fish was incredibly fast: he managed to toss his head and, at the same time, slap on the sword hilt loudly. Oleg’s fist sent him flying across the room. In his fall, Fish smashed the table to splinters with his back.

Oleg raised him by collar, flung onto the bench. Fish was half-stunned. Oleg tied him up with the rope prepared beforehand, took his sword and two hidden knives with heavy ends.

Fish shook his head, coming to himself. His tongue felt bleeding gums. “You knocked out my foretooth, barbarian!”

“Don’t twitch,” Oleg muttered. “I could strike you like a rabbit, between ears, no marks then. You can have a golden tooth instead.”

“You are quick,” Fish remarked. His sharp eyes searched the mighty figure of the barbarian who showed not a trace of drunken sluggishness. “And strong. I’d hire you. For a double salary. That’s really much!”

“I am hired already,” Oleg told him. “You see, I didn’t want to smash your lips.”

“It’s what I’m paid for,” Fish said philosophically. “But the inn is surrounded, as you know, and my lads wait me back. With a reply.”

“Which?”

“The cup.”

“And we?”

“You pose no interest to our master,” Fish told him with displeasure. “It’s none of my business, thus. The cup is mine, and you may go to hell!”

Oleg frowned. The names of the supreme magicians of Secret Seven flashed in gallop across his memory. Veterans don’t count. It must be one of the fresh. The new generation of Secret Seven can be cruel, much more brutal than the elder, but they don’t kill without necessity. They would only kill for business, not for vengeance or any other emotion. “Is your true master waiting somewhere in the street?” he asked slowly.

Fish spat a dark clot of blood at the floor, felt his bleeding gums anxiously with the apex of his tongue again. “The one who made an order. Whether true or not, it’s no concern of ours, is it?”

Oleg moved the bench, with Fish tied to it, closer to the window, for those in the street to see his head and shoulders. Fisk looked derisively, grinned, baring his teeth. He still had plenty of them, good and beautiful.

Oleg filled a cup with wine, held it out to Fish. “Take it.”

Fish played his brows in surprise. “It seems I have my hands tied. Who could have done it? Do you know?”

“I don’t force you to drink,” Oleg snapped, “but take it. Your elbows are tied, but your fingers free. When the door opens, let them see you sitting peacefully with a cup of wine in hand!”

“Why would I hold a cup on my knee?”

“Because you are loaded full but still want more of it.”

“It does look like me,” Fish agreed. “What if I don’t take it?”

At once, Oleg set a knifepoint against his right eye. “I’ll put out one of your eyes, then another, and then…”

“Give me the cup,” Fish interrupted. “But mind you will be in our hands then! The master has no interest in you, but I feel like starting to have it myself… How do you, barbarians of North, put it: a tooth for a tooth? So you should better treat me with respect.”

Oleg listened to the steps in the corridor: they sounded at the other end of it and died away soon. “You need to take us first,” he reminded.

“I have the soldiers whom I passed the Saracen war with!”

“What are Saracen as against Drevlyans? Think you have seen no true war.” He smirked, baring his wolfish teeth, and saw distrust in the mercenary’s face. Fish was holding the cup, its long stem set on his thigh, his gaze shifted between the window, with the silk girdle on it, and the door.

They had a short waiting before there were resolute steps in the corridor, then the door flew open, as though kicked, and clanged against the wall. Two men with bare swords emerged at the doorway. When they stepped into the room and saw Fish sitting in a casual pose, a cup of wine in hand, one said something back over his shoulder. The third man entered, kicked the door closed without looking back. He had a drawn crossbow in hands, its metal pieces gleaming.

Fish sat with his back to the window, his face was shaded. The two men came almost close to him when the first of them gasped, wheeled round with raised sword to Oleg who was sitting on the bed with a drowsy look. Oleg threw both knives at once, with both hands. A difficult trick, but missing the aim in five steps is more difficult. The next moment he ducked, as though plunged into water: an iron arrow from the crossbow swished over. He snatched the sword from the corner.

The crossbowman drew a saber. Oleg leapt over the corpses, in a hurry to finish fighting as fast as possible. His first blow was parried by a saber, which slipped deftly under his arm: Oleg barely had time to recoil. Yelling, he landed a terrible blow. The soldier dodged skillfully, but Oleg caught him at that: the wonderer’s knee crunched into his lower jaw. The hireling jumped, feeling the hash of teeth in his mouth. Oleg’s punch sent him flying into the corner.

As Oleg took a breath, some strange feeling made him duck. Some steel swished overhead, clanged on the sword he held up. Blindly, he elbowed at the place where the enemy should have been, heard a crunch and a sob, but strong fingers clasped at his throat. Gasping for air, Oleg snatched the invisible enemy by head and pulled, twisting his neck. A crunch, and fingers on his throat went limp at once. Oleg wheeled round, released his grip on the attacker.

The body that collapsed on the floor was Fish: his legs still tied to the bench but the ropes on his arms had been cut by a sharp blade. One of his soldiers was wriggling on the floor, Oleg’s knife in his throat, a saber in hand. Dying, he used it to cut the arms of his boss free.

“You had good soldiers,” Oleg agreed, breathing heavily. “But I didn’t want to kill you, fool!”

There were three corpses in the room, among scattered things and broken fragments of the table and chairs. The fourth man, if even he lived, would never taste again the manly joy of picking bones, getting the sweet marrow out, spitting out such tiny bony splinters that even a starving dog would not gnaw at them.

Oleg picked the cup from the puddle of wine and blood, shook it off and put on the windowsill. Suddenly he heard a groan. A recollection made him dash to the locked closet. A short iron tail of the crossbow bolt was stuck in the thick wooden door, in the very middle of it, the oak board splintered with that mighty strike. The tail was looking up, as if the bolt were shot from the ceiling.

“Helen!” Oleg cried anxiously. “It’s all over!”

Hurriedly, he removed the bar, opened the door. He felt it too heavy, that was wrong. Helen all but hung on it: she was span with a bolt. Trying to miss not a single word, she had pressed against the door. When the crossbowman pushed the trigger, his iron bolt went, with a terrible force, through both the dead wood and the live body made for kisses…

With disgust, Oleg looked over the room: it was spilled over with blood and wine. Corpses, broken furniture… The crossbowman did his best to pretend dead. Oleg heard his quiet sigh behind when the young woman, bathed in hot blood, fell out from the closet. A stinker. He grasped her life had been taken by his hand… Though not his will.

He threw the blanket off the bed, took his strong lamellar bow, selected one of the three special arrows in his quiver. That one was iron, more of a short spear than an arrow: large as a dart and thick as a finger, with a head of tempered steel. He rummaged in the bag for a thick rope of very durable fabric: in that land, it was called silk. The worms who spin these wonderful fibers must have a good appetite.

He heard heavy steps behind the door, as if a stone pillar were walking, then a strong cheerful voice. “Sir wonderer, don’t sock on my head!”

Thomas stepped into the room, reeled and shrunk back. His back slammed the door shut, his blue eyes widened. “Sir wonderer!.. What’s that?”

“A different way of entertainment.”

“Sir wonderer…” Thomas said again. He twisted his head round madly. “It’s not a monkish way! I mean, not a way of men like you. You have more to do with prayers, fasts…”

“My prayers did for them,” Oleg grunted as he tied the rope hastily to the arrow. “Be sure they’ll have a very long fast! Even that one, who’s just acting a sham beetle…”

Thomas walked round the bodies with disgust, on tiptoe, gripped the crossbowman’s neck, slapped on the back of his head with other hand. There was a click. Oleg nodded with approval: the punch with iron fist made the crossbowman’s soul pass out of the body for some half an hour, enough time to get far away.

“Four,” Thomas grumbled, “and the woman, poor thing… You could earn a knighthood, sir wonderer! Though a noble origin is required, you could figure out something. Find somebody among your ancestors, as they do everywhere…”

“I’ll do without it,” Oleg replied, “but thank you for the idea all the same. Prop up the door with beds. In the closet, there’s a chest with stones. Drag it here!”

“Are we to hold a defense?” Thomas asked with distrust.

“Yes. Like on the Tower of David.”

“Isn’t they all here?”

“More to come,” Oleg assured. “We must run, sir knight.”

Thomas straightened up with pride, his armor made a grating sound. “Sir wonderer, I ask you!” he snapped with dignity. “A knight never runs.”

“Well, to retreat. To withdraw, if you like it. We have to win, haven’t we?”

“Sometimes a fine death is worth more than a puny victory!”

“It’s not the case,” Oleg assured and tightened the knot. Thomas’s eyes goggled, his eyebrows flew up to hid under the helmet. The arrow is giant, unbelievable, the rope tied not on its end, where the feathering should be, but on its middle where a circular furrow in iron is seen.

Oleg drew the bow with effort, Thomas saw the bulging bumps of his monstrous muscle. For the first time, he thought with doubt whether he could draw such a bow. Fortunately I’m a knight and have nothing to do with this inhuman weapon. My codex bounds me to be noble even to mortal enemies. “Are we going to hunt elephants?”

Oleg did not reply. He sat down on the windowsill, kicked the shutters open. Heavy steps were heard from the corridor. Oleg smiled faintly: just in time. The thirty cutthroats whom Fish had threatened him with were not in the street at that moment but walking upstairs, searching the landings, and the best ones coming up to the door…

Chapter 23

Thomas barred the door, dragged the heavy chest out with a thunder, sneezing of dust, , propped up the door with it, piled up the broken fragments of the table, heavy banks and chairs. Oleg laid the coiled rope on the broad windowsill next to him. He smelled the dirty air below, heard a clatter of hooves dying away. Across the wide street, there was a tall gloomy building with lights in three of its guarded windows.

“Sir wonderer!” Judging by the knight’s face, as grey as ashes, he grasped where his strange friend was going to shoot a bolt. His weakened fingers unclenched, the sword all but slipped out of the iron hand.

Oleg drew the bow string with force, aimed. His face went crimson, his teeth flashed in a grimace of torment. Thomas heard a ringing click against the leather glove: the wonderer had put it on providently. The heavy bolt vanished, the rope started to uncoil rapidly.

In perfect silence, both heard a barely audible, distinct ringing sound of broken glass. At once, the wonderer seized the end of the rope and pulled. There was a loud knock on the door, an impatient hoarse shout. “Hey, Fish!.. Antonio, Opudalo!..”

Thomas took his sword with both hands, stood near the door. The wonderer stretched the rope, tied its end quickly to the hook that fastened the shutters to the windowsill. They heard an impatient bang on the door. The bar cracked, the heads of thick nails moved out of their sockets.

Oleg jumped off the windowsill, put on his wide baldric with a huge sword hastily, snatched the bag. “Sir Thomas! You first!”

Thomas was squatting at the side of the door, his legs half-bent, as if in ride, his sword raised overhead. The knight’s eyes were fixed on the bending board of the door, pieces of dry paint and small splinters flying sideways from it. In the corridor, there were harsh voices, clang of steel, trample of heeled boots.

“Sir Thomas,” Oleg called again in an angry whisper, “even the Holy Virgin would have commanded retreat. Why the hell she’d need a dead knight? She doesn’t know what to make of him live! Your life’s worth less than a damned thing, I agree, but who will take your cup to Britain then? I have no need of it. And who will marry Krizhina?”

Thomas shifted his perplexed gaze between the wonderer and the door shaking and bending like a sail. Oleg seized him by elbow, dragged to the window. Thomas looked out and recoiled, as though kicked by a horse between his eyes. The night was pitch-dark, the lit end of the rope — so thin! — disappeared in the creepy dark only seven feet below. A fathomless pit! Several floors to fell down to the earth, and no soft grass below, only the street paved tightly with stone slabs, a fool he was to admire it the day before…

Oleg looked back angrily, as he heard the heavy pounding. With a ringing sound, the bar flew out of hinges, crashed down in the middle of the room. Oleg tore his belt off, made Thomas climb on the windowsill, fastened the belt quickly on both him and the rope. “Quick!” he hissed. “Or we’ll die, like Sveys without butter…”

Thomas peered into the scary darkness with fear. He had been standing on the brink of abyss before: on the Tower of David, the tall wall of Jerusalem, but that was in a fury of storm, a fever of battle… and in a sunny day, after all! His muscle began to turn water, his knees bent, unable to bear the weight of armor.

Oleg hurried him, pushed on his back. “Quick! Move it! They’re breaking in!”

“Sir wonderer… And you?”

“I’ll follow!”

Thomas hurried to climb down from the windowsill, feeling his courage and manly strength back to him. “Sir wonderer, I am insulted! The duty of any warrior, a knight in particular, is to protect civilian people. And you are a priest, though I hate your faith!”

The door was shaking. A crack emerged in it, wide enough to drive a finger, but the heavy chest, with its edge stuck in the hollow between the floor boards, prevented it from flying open. Someone squeezed his fingers through the crack, fumbled around in search of the obstacle to remove it. Oleg snarled, grabbed Thomas with both arms.

“Sir wonderer,” the knight protested in great indignation, “I can’t leave you!”

With an angry groan, Oleg hurled him out through the window. Terrified, Thomas felt falling into the black abyss. He clutched convulsively at the rope, felt a forceful jerk at his iron collar behind: the wonderer kept him from coming down upon the thin rope with all his weight at once….

The last thing Thomas heard was a crack of boards followed by triumphant screams of legionaries. He slid on, suspended by his belt to the fine thread. It quivered, hardly able to bear his weight. His thick gauntleted fingers slid, as though soaped, on the smooth rope, which ringed like a tightly drawn crossbow string. Thomas felt sick as he imagined the thread bursting with a crack and him, a noble crusader knight in his steel, collapsing from the height of the fifth floor on the stone slabs, crunching against them like a lobster, his brain splashing around…

In terror, he took a firmer grip and dragged himself on into the darkness, along the invisible salutary thread, his eyes burnt with sticky, disgustingly bitter sweat. Then he was thunderstruck by a dreadful thought: was he moving in the right direction? The turns and tugs before… He had to hurry: the rope was too thin to endure two men. Sir wonderer is beating off the legionaries who broke into the room! He may already be wounded or killed. It’s all my fault!

He howled with terror and impotence of a noble Angle who felt lost in the night over a street in Constantinople. Almost a barbarian city as compared to Rome. He bowed his head, trying to see the wall of the house, but his metal collar, made to protect the neck from swords, impeded to turn it. He heard a patter of high heels far below, a playful woman’s giggle answered by a deep-voiced laughter of a well-fed Romay. Thomas swung over them, his head gurgling, as well as his stomach. He imagined himself falling down before those strolling clods and felt so sick he couldn’t help vomitting. Below, there were still giggles, jokes, clatter of high heels. With the last of his strength, Thomas dragged himself along the rope. Even if the direction was wrong, he would help valiant sir wonderer in his last mortal battle, instead of hanging on that damned rope like a dump caterpillar in a spider’s web!

His body struck against a hard surface. He felt it, found iron rods, wriggled to grip the salutary metal, which the Romays used to guard their windows, with both hands. His foot found a crack between the stone blocks that formed the house. The heart beat frequently, thumping not on his ribs but on his iron armor.

On the other side of the metal rods, , there was a dark shape of thick iron bolt pressed tightly against them. The stretched rope was tied to it! Thomas sobbed, leaving his terror behind, muttered a slack curse for the wonderer who told him nothing, gave no warning, so he was pursued all the way by the vision of the arrowhead coming out of the wall and him, Thomas Malton of Gisland, falling like a toad, with his limbs spread wide apart, in the middle of the street… Foolishly, he thought the bolt should have been stuck into the wall, and he could not imagine the force needed to drive it so that to endure a big man in full knightly armor!

Suddenly, the rope started to shake violently. The figure of the wonderer emerged from the darkness, running on a tightly stretched rope, as if it were a log, his outstretched arms rocking from side to side, the two-handed sword and stuffed bag in hands.

He took a running jump on the grating, clung to it for a moment, the sword flashed and hid behind his back, the bag shifted onto his shoulders. Thomas wanted to undo the belt that fastened him to the rope but he dared not to release the rods. He tried to drive away the very thought of him, an expert in jousting, hanging on the wall on fifth floor, like a March cat, above the stone-paved street.

A knife flashed in the wonderer’s hand, the rope burst under the blade, fell into the dark. Across the street, there was a shriek, then a heavy stroke on stone, as if a sack of wet clay dropped on the pavement.

“What’s now?” Thomas asked in a scared whisper. “Gnaw at the grating?”

“What are we to do in a woman’s bedroom?” Oleg grimaced. “If there was the procurator’s daughter… but it’s his granny! We’ll better get into the window below.”

“The procurator’s daughter is there?”

“Shame on you, Sir Thomas! Krizhina’s waiting for you. Poor girl! If only she knew what you are dreaming of…”

He vanished in the dark. Thomas heard a screech below, as if rust was scratched away, then an irritated whisper. “Sir Thomas, wake up. Stop dreaming of the procurator’s daughter!”

Thomas hung on the tips of his fingers and toes, playing a spider. He was hot in his armor, like in the Hell’s stove, his limbs trembling, numb fingers about to unclench. Suddenly some hooked paw emerged from the darkness below, seized him by leg. He all but fell off in panics, but managed to slide down, with a support from below.

The wonderer was on the windowsill. He got a better grip on the knight’s belt and dragged him, with a screech of iron on iron, through the ruined grating: only the topmost and the lowest of its horizontal rods were undamaged, while all the vertical ones had either vanished or got terribly bent sideways.

They collapsed into the dark room and stiffened. The house was silent, save for muffled bangs on a copper caldron far below, and a dog barking: an old and lazy one, judging by the sound.

“The hirelings are now running upstairs,” Thomas supposed. With effort, he got up to his shaking feet, brought his trembling hands to his face. He felt cold and heavy in stomach as if he’d swallowed a block of ice or a frozen sheatfish. Meanwhile, Oleg ran about the room, stepping as silently as a giant cat, touched the door, set it ajar to look out. A strip of crimson light fell in from the corridor. They smelt smoke of a tar torch.

“They don’t hear,” Oleg said. “First they should guess where we are. I’ve cut the rope! Its end reaches the ground. That’s what they see from the room — and think we’ve climbed down the rope. And silence below, no shouts nor noise, means their sentries have missed us, or we bribed them. While they sort it out and whack the guilty ones, we can take a breath and get away.”

“Sir wonderer, I’d rather get away without taking a breath!”

“Is something up?” Oleg wondered.

“Yes. When you cut the rope, someone was climbing it!”

Oleg shook his head in astonishment. “Oh, brave they are… You, sir knight, are a different pair of shoes: a true hero. Another man like you can hardly be found in all the Britain, and I can’t believe in more of such heroes found in two thousand miles away… Well, you’re right. We must get away.”

Thomas felt flattered, even his legs stopped trembling. Oleg opened the door wider, looked out and stepped there. The sack on his back made him a likeness of a giant turtle, and the sword hilt and the bow, sticking out on a level with his ears, changed that into a scary creature of night.

Thomas slipped out after the wonderer, glancing at him with shame. He took the larger part of our common load again.

They walked along the broad corridor lit by oil lamps in copper bowls on the walls decorated with colored panels, its floor of expensive marble with intricate patterns. On both sides, there were massive doors of valuable sorts of wood, with decorative carving, ornate copper handles, gleaming nails with broad patterned heads. Behind one of them, they heard laughter, merry voices of women. Oleg stopped there and listened — a hermit indeed! — while Thomas all but died of anxiety, glancing back at the long empty corridor, where, despite the late night, a guard, a servant, or a late guest could show up at every moment…

The stairs were seen at the very end. Thomas ran up to them after the wonderer, trying to be silent the same, but his iron feet made a terrible thunder that caused the whole great bulk of a stone house to shake, the lamps to twinkle with fear, the splendid portraits of noble ancestors to jump and drop pieces of paint.

Thundering like an avalanche coming from the peak of Himalayas, Thomas darted after the wonderer to the floor below. They hid in a draped niche to let some dark figures pass by. It was hot and stuffy there, fine dust filled their nostrils. Thomas tried to hold his nose, but the gauntlet banged, very loud in that deathly silence, on his lowered visor. Thomas froze, not daring to move, heard the steps stop near him. His nose was itching unbearably, and he sneezed with all his might, thinking of nothing in the world but the excruciating itch. I just couldn’t help it.

In the faint light that penetrated through the heavy curtain, he saw a flash of sword nearby, heard the wonderer’s constrained breath. The steps on the other side came close. “Ektius, did you hear it?” a soft voice said in astonishment.

“I’m damned if I didn’t!” a different voice replied. It seemed to belong to an older man. “I have told you! And you, with your modern ideas… The other world does exist, and our old house is haunted. Though only at night.”

“Who can that be? Do you have any ideas?”

“A great-grandfather of our master, judging by his beastly bellow. And also a clank of iron, did you hear? He was the curator of Southern moorings and ended his life in chains, beheaded for misappropriation of the duties paid. Or maybe his father who met the same end…”

Thomas slapped on his visor again, trying to hold his nose. The wonderer’s fingers removed the iron plate quickly, squeezed the bridge of his nose painfully. Surprised, Thomas felt that the unbearable itch stopped abruptly. Like a scream ceased by a sword blow.

“They live own life there…” a thoughtful voice said on the other side of the curtain. “I think… no, it seems to me that ghosts are strolling about this empty house at night, just like you and me, and one asks another, ‘Do you think we should believe in those tales of live men?’”

Thomas felt his legs numb, his nose itching desperately again. The bitter sweat gnawed at his eyes, tickled his neck ruthlessly, ran down his back in hot acrid streams, his feet bathed in the hot. Probably a strange puddle was forming around him. And the two insomniac philosophical fools would discuss its origin in a long and tedious way, based on the existence of the other world and the features of ghostly life.

“I think… no, it seems to me it’s definitely not our master’s grandfather,” the voice said thoughtfully. “He was hanged, I now remember that exactly! Hanged in accordance with his noble origin: on a silk rope! And this one, I think… no, it seems to me…”

Thomas was about to collapse: standing on one foot is very difficult, especially when you are choking with dust and gushing with sweat. He heard the wonderer sigh nearby, then felt a light push on shoulder. Thomas took a deep breath and heard, “I think… no, it seems to me…”

The knight tore the curtain off in a jerk, saw two faces recoiling in fright. “What seems to you, fool?” he yelled fiercely. “A bum? If you thought rather than it seemed to you, you wouldn’t be such an ass!”

The wonderer stepped ahead. “Your Grace,” he told Thomas loudly, “who knew your great-grandson would degenerate into such an ass? I warned you to have less excesses…”

Thomas’s fist darted forward. The poor man flew silently across the corridor and slipped down the opposite wall. The wonderer waved his hand carelessly, the second philosopher gasped and sprawled, like a frog, in the middle of the corridor.

“Run!” Oleg whispered. They darted downstairs, thundering like a herd of shoed horses. Thomas gasped, gripped the walls in abrupt turns, his iron fingers left deep scratches. Oleg rushed like a huge bear, jumped over stairs, came running into the walls, wheeled round silently and dashed on.

It seemed to Thomas they had reached the cellars when Oleg stopped abruptly. “The last flight of stairs ahead,” he said softly. “But the entrance is closed… and guarded. By two.”

Thomas gasped for air, his mouth wide open. “We crush…” he said hoarsely. “Overrun!.. Only two?”

Oleg shook his head, looking sad and accusing. “Innocent people? In their own house?”

Thomas wiped sweat off his face with his iron palm, turned away, feeling a bit ashamed. He breathed heavily, shot anxious glances around: at any moment, someone could come and see them on that noticeable spot — in the middle of the stairs!

Oleg took a golden dinar out of a small pocket in his belt, swung his arm broadly. Thomas could not see the coin vanished in the dim light, but the far guards alerted, one took his axe and walked briskly along the wall, bending like a predator. He disappeared in the shade. For a long time, nothing happened. Thomas got all fidgety when, finally, there came the guard’s surprised voice. Another guard cried back, they exchanged few words. The second guard checked the door bars quickly, glanced out at the window to see whether some important guest was coming upstairs from the street, and hurried to his comrade, his drawn crossbow with him.

Oleg waited for the guard to disappear in the corridor shade, then made a sign to Thomas. They darted quickly across the hall, Oleg removed the hooks and bars in a flash. When he flung the door open, there was an angry shout behind, a click of steel bowstring. Thomas recoiled instinctively, a short crossbow bolt went into the massive door near his head. He shook his fist, leaped out into the night street after Oleg.

Oleg dragged the knight quickly along the wall, hiding in the shade. They turned round the corner, and that was when Thomas felt the cold air, the closeness of sea, saw the stony space of broad, colossal streets ahead.

They heard a shout behind, a bang of door, a clang of steel. Oleg took an idle pace, swaying slightly, his belly thrust out. Thomas also tried to assume a carefree air of a reveler coming back home, though his heart still beating like a sheep’s tail and some smallest muscle under his knees shaking nastily.

“Now where?” Thomas asked. “Our inn…”

“…said its last cuckoo,” Oleg replied. “Fortunately, we are no Saracen to travel with our harems. I’ve taken all our things. Do you have the cup?”

Thomas grabbed his bag in fright. His fingers felt the familiar prominence: it resembled a woman’s tight breast or her lusty hip curve. The cup replied with a muffled tinkle. Thomas hurried to take his iron fingers off it. “But Constantinople is big!”

“I know plenty of decent inns and hotels,” Oleg said comfortingly. He thought for a while, then shook his head with regret. “Though decent ones do not fit… We’ll be exposed there.”

“Let’s go to the port,” Thomas offered.

“Sir Thomas, isn’t Krizhina waiting for you? And I’m too old for such things. We need something in the middle of decency and comfort. Such places can also be found in the city, strange as it may seem.”

* * *

Oleg sat in the tavern of the inn where he’d stopped with Thomas. The knight almost never budged from their room, a small and dirty one on the fifth floor. He would sharpen the swords, both own and the wonderer’s, mend the hollows in his armor. Oleg brought him food and beer up. Thomas was too noticeable in his armor, and he refused to take it off. Meanwhile, Oleg, in his barbarian jack of wolfskin, could easily pass for a longshoreman, a sailor from a barbarian ship, or a smuggler, whom the shores of Golden Bay were teemed with.

In order not to stand out at all, Oleg hunched up, thrust out his belly to hide his mighty stature. He never hid his face, but it was now angry, annoyed, with no hint of reclusion and search of high Truth. He swilled beer slowly from a huge mug, shot sulky glances at visitors. He could see himself in their eyes: a shaggy, embittered man, eager to make a scuffle whenever an opportunity presents itself.

He saw dicers in three tables away, felt which side was made heavier. He could win a lot of money before they knifed him. He spotted men who went into the secret door to see the innkeeper: all bronzed, smelling of sea wind, strong in shoulders, sweeping in moves. Each of them wore a strange wide hat, which was tied under his chin with a broad stripe, and a predatory curved Saracen knife in a leather scabbard on his belt. Contraband goods, poisons, maps and precise information of the numbers and positions of imperial hosts, the plans of invasions, big and small conspiracies, robberies — all of it flows into the secret door guarded by those two men who look like arrant drunkards with mugs of beer.

It was the third day Oleg spent in the tavern. He would drink much, due to the heat, have a game of dice in times. For dinner, he always ordered some roast meat with greens: a common food of Slavic shepherds, one of whom he pretended to be. As he came upstairs with food for Thomas, he found the knight nervous and angry. The time flies by, the beautiful Krizhina wrings her hands in the castle on the bank of Don, and the wonderer is drinking like a sponge, goggling at the daubed whores who cluster round every sailor or smuggler.

Oleg already knew all the innkeeper’s spies. He could follow their ways in the narrow city nooks in his mind, could earn a fortune by disclosing the secret contraband stores to the basileus or naming the key figures of the secret net that had spread over the left wing of the Emperor’s palace. However, he’d seen not a single spy of the Seven yet: he would have known them once they appeared on the threshold.

Only in the evening of the third day, did he see a man whose resemblance to a smuggler was too close to be true. Oleg’s heart got fluttering. He leaned his head to the jug of wine, watching closely, out of a corner of his eye, the face, gait, moves of that man. No urgent need to hear him speaking. Mimics can give out the lock, stock, and barrel of such secret thoughts that one does not suspect himself of.

The “smuggler” sat at a table nearby. While Oleg watched him asquint, over the mug of beer, the door flew open and two more men came in. Oleg almost choked. First no one, then three agents of the Seven at once! All strong and muscular, with cold eyes and exact moves that were adjusted in the exhausting exercise with arms and hand-to-hand combats. The three were not too young but in the most dangerous age: mature, experienced, skillful.

He stooped over the mug to hide the glitter in his eyes. I have to warn Thomas. The knight had got Oleg’s leave to go out. In those minutes, he must be pacing up and down in front of the tavern, cloaked and hooded tightly: not in his cloak with red cross, but in a grey one of a common man. However, it was Thomas who could drive the attention of spies: still in his armor, huge knightly spurs dinging at his every step… And no way to rise from the table at once: spies are on the special look-out at first moments, they’ll spot me.

The last of the three took in the hall at a careful glance, walked along the narrow passage among tables, watching and listening. Suddenly he turned and stopped in front of the table where a lone sulky barbarian of sturdy built, clad in a rough wolfskin, was swelling his beer. The spy made no move to sit down, but set both fists against the table top and peered at Oleg.

Feeling his heart thumping violently, as it forced up hot blood for a brief fierce fighting, Oleg turned his head slowly. “Why are you staring, red ape?” he bellowed angrily. “No alms on weekdays, and don’t beg me for them on holidays… Get out! Don’t stand in my light!”

“Hey, friend,” the agent said comfortingly, “calm down, down…”

“Friend?” Oleg flared up. “Who said I can have a red ape as my friend? An ape with such equine… I mean, such a pig snout! Though I’m no Sar… Sara… Saracen, I hate pigs! Save the ones roast, in the middle of the table, with horseradish…”

He lapsed into drunken mumbling, dropped his head on the table but jerked it up at once, stared at the agent before him with a dim eye, as though trying to recall where the man had come from. The agent did not wince. “Calm down,” he said kindly. “If I have offended you, please forgive me. I owe you a drink. Hey, wench, a mug of good wine!”

Oleg gave a drunken smile, waved his dirty finger before the agent’s nose. “Who told you I… I can’t pay for my own drink? Do you think yourself the only who can get things past harbor rats?”

The woman put before Oleg a big glass of red wine: a cut-glass one, set in thick copper. Oleg sniffed secretly and smelled, apart from the fermented grape juice, a strange sweetly-disgusting fragrance. As beautiful and dangerous as a young viper. The wine had poison in it… a poison or another nasty thing to make a man go out of his wits, blab out everything he concealed before, and then turn up his toes all the same.

Oleg held his breath, strained to make his face filled with blood and his ears crimson. Having put that furious look on, he stood up, a scary shaggy barbarian, started to raise his voice, working himself up, breaking into a shout. “What’s about me… that seems I can’t buy wine myself? I can buy the whole of this hovel if I like! I can buy you — outbid and purchase with your lock, stock, and barrel, your piles and bald patch! You paid your last coin for your pants, fastened your belt at the last hole! Such a worm to treat me? Me, a Viking from Big Serpent?”

The agent gave him an unfriendly once-over, but controlled himself, not allowing the squabble and scuffle with a drunken barbarian who only lacks a good brawl, his mug smashed and his snot bloody to finish his carouse normally and have a good night sleep. Oleg felt the agent suspecting him… but only suspecting. I need to keep up a part. If he had to fight, he would fight as a Viking from Big Serpent, not a peaceful hermit who, however, was not born a hermit.

The agent replied with a patient malice, though the bad blood started to fill him too. “I don’t usually invite every sot to drink with me! And if I do, he should accept! You shall drink it, fool! If you scream, we’ll maim you at first, and then you’ll drink it all the same, even if you gulp down your teeth with this wine!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Oleg spotted the two men coming from both sides. He made blood rush back from his face. Let them see me go pale and sober with fear. He reached for the glass, his arm shaking, gave a begging look to the agent who grinned in triumph, his suspicion gone. The barbarian was only fierce in words, as all men of his sort are, while heated up with wine and swears, but to stand up bravely, face to face…

Oleg’s fingers clenched on the glass, his shaking hand started to raise it. When the glass was on a level with his breast, he flung it at the agent’s face. The spy recoiled, a long curved dagger was in his hand at once, but his eyes poured over with caustic wine, then a mighty blow sent him flying over the table into the depth of the tavern. Oleg elbowed the second one on his belly, without looking there, stooped, as he expected a back header of the third one, lifted a heavy oak bench and brandished it overhead.

He heard two dry thumps, saw the hilts of throwing knives that appeared in the thick seat before it came down on the third agent with a thunder, smashing him, broking his bones. Oleg, still in the part of a drunken Viking, swung the bench, roared, swore in Sveyan and cursed in Norman, but in that mad whirlwind, his eyes caught a glimpse of those few faces that differed in looks or expressions.

Suddenly he was surrounded. Fighting, he put his mask aside, as he saw an elder man in simple clothing who rose from a far table and, in no apparent hurry, walked out. Oleg struck with his feet, elbows, and head. All’s fair that leads to survival. One could learn much of the foul business of maiming and killing if he did not shy away from dirty tricks of Egyptians, Hittites, Arians, Scythes. Up to the present-day warrior monks.

There were seven or eight crawling, moaning bodies on the floor when the door thundered open and Thomas burst in. With a momentary flash of sword in hand, he jumped ahead, cut, for some reason, the oak bench apart at one strike. “You did them alone again?” he screamed indignantly. “Is it fair?”

“They are not worthy of a knight’s sword,” Oleg explained hastily. “All common men, that’s strange!” He ran past Thomas, darted out into the night street. The enormous city was dark, with only crimson fires blazing on the towers and orange lamps lit in the upper windows of rich mansions.

A hunched figure slipped along a dark wall. Oleg alerted but kept smelling the musty city air, listening to rustle, far shouts. In back alleys and streets, he saw quite whores. They felt, with their sharp senses of small predators accustomed to danger, the bloody brawl behind the thick tavern door. “That way,” he pointed at last. “He ran there!”

Thomas kept his curses to himself, sheathed his sword and rushed after the wonderer. Oleg dashed along the wall, as silent as a giant bat, his arms cut the air noiselessly. His feet made neither a crunch nor a click, while Thomas’s steps rumbled and thundered as if he’d galloped into a china shop on his warhorse. “Sir wonderer, whom are we after?”

“A thief. He’s after the cup.”

Thomas felt his bag, which he never left now, in fright. He fell back. When he managed, with great effort, to come up with Oleg again, his eyes had almost popped out, his heart pounded violently.

“Sir Thomas, go back to the inn!” the wonderer cried out on the run, without looking back. “I swear I will only track one odd man and be back at once! We will storm the enemy’s fortress together, I swear it on the beard of Rod! Or on the innocence of Holy Virgin, as you like…” Having said that, he speeded up. In the narrow dark alleys, Thomas lost the sight of his back at once.

The knight spat, feeling his saliva tight and thickened, and stopped. His heart quivered like a small bird in the throat, eager to fly out. Sweat showered down his body, a sound of surf in his ears. He rocked from side to side: it had been ages since he ran in his full armor the last time. He grasped that the wonderer had made a scuffle to scare the unknown agent away and pursue him then. He, Thomas Malton of Gisland, would have done the same: a sophisticated stratagem. But what fortress did he speak of? Were they to storm the castle of basileus, as the Emperor of Romays is named? But why would they need the Emperor?

With no ideas at all, Thomas went plodding back.

Chapter 24

When Thomas came up into their room in the inn, the wonderer was lying on his bed, hands behind head. On the floor, there was a big plate of fruit, a jug of wine. Judging by apple tails, the wonderer had gorged apples with their cores.

Oleg livened up at once. “Greetings, Sir Thomas!” he said cheerfully, waved his hand and even his right foot: probably it was a sign of ardent love and passion. “I see you visited all the taverns on the way… plenty of them, I recall. What the hell, where’s my youth? You must have missed no whore, a whole quarter of them here. Fine swarthy Asian wenches, plump Jewish women, cold girls of North… You did a right thing. There’s only dust and mud of roads ahead.”

“Curse that tongue of yours, sir wonderer,” Thomas said. He flopped heavily on the bench, his face exhausted, the red pressed-in stripe on his forehead filled with mud, big beads of sweat running down his face. “All the night long, I tried to get out of the back streets where you left me. Whenever I went, it was either a dead end… or a return to the same place!”

“How’s that possible?” Oleg gasped. “The inn’s but a step from!”

“I saw it then,” Thomas explained in vexation. “When I got to a familiar street. Precisely, when I came to the inn’s gate… and even then I almost passed by! Do you have anything more substantial than this food for goats?”

“I’ll send for meat,” Oleg replied hastily. “Don’t take your armor off. It suits you, I see now. You are so magnificent in it, so noble! I tracked the place of the chief malefactor. We need to take him quickly, before he thinks up a new foul trick to play!”

As Thomas ate the meat the servant brought them, he glowered at the wonderer. He knew the saying about the donkey who was not relieved of his load, as that was said to be decorating him. He felt dead tired, like never before, and wished greatly to undo his clasps and get out of the heavy steel armor. “One of the Seven?” he asked.

Oleg jumped, as though thrown up, came to the window. Thomas saw his back strained. “Yes,” the wonderer replied in a dull voice, without turning to him. “I hope he’s alone. And I’m afraid he is!”

Thomas choked, started to chew the hot meat slower, with more care. Strength returned to his tired body, flowed in with every slice he swallowed, but his fear of the unfathomable powers of magic was back too. Despite his strength and courage, the wonderer is no man of war. He fails to understand that’s impossible to break into a well-guarded house with less than a hundred well-armed soldiers. Who will allow such an attack within the capital city? To take a castle, we need a thousand men. And if the master is an adept of magic, one of the Seven Secret Lords, no host will do for him! “Will we break through the gate?” Thomas asked, doing his best to conceal fear.

The wonderer paced up and down their small room, like a predatory animal in a cage, clenched his fists, rubbed the temples of his head. “The gate is always closed…”

“We’ll break it!”

“Is it a jest? While we break the gate, the Secret One will sit by the window, drinking tea and pointing at us.”

“I think what he drinks is no tea,” Thomas replied with his mouth full, chewed it well and added, “Surely, a direct assault is impossible. What if we enter as traders? I don’t think he goes shopping. Rather the goods are brought to his place.”

“I doubt whether traders are allowed into the house itself.”

“What we need is to pass the gate!”

“Sure? The entrance door of the house can be even stronger. I know such cases.” Thomas raised his eyebrows in surprise, and Oleg waved away in vexation. “Sir knight, one can be born a seignior but not a hermit! In my young years, I’d climbed on towers, like a nasty monkey, jumped from masts… A good way from above! Pity it won’t work… We have to come by sea!”

“Is the house at the shore?”

“It’s rather a tower,” Oleg explained. “Though there’s a house too. However, if I got the signs right, we shall find our foe in the tower. It’s a more convenient place for observation.”

“Of us?”

Oleg winced. “Of stars, ebbs and flows of a tide, the phases of moon, the flocks of birds… In a word, we must try the way by sea.”

Thomas felt his hands cold. He moved an unfinished slice of meat away, sighed convulsively, and objected. “In a boat? We’ll be set with arrows before we row up to. It’s no forest: neither bushes nor logs to hide behind. A crossbow bolt can even break my steel armor! And moorings are tall here, for guards to hide and endure an assault from sea easily.”

Oleg ran about the room for a while, then hurled himself on the bed. The thick boards gave a plaintive creak. He turned onto his back, his broad palms darted behind his head. His eyes screwed up angrily at the whitewashed ceiling. “I see no other way! Neither do my charms. If we boat up as fishermen, we shan’t be met by a whole host. The mooring is only guarded by two men. Though they are protected by its tall stone board… And two guards at the entrance to the tower! Only the four of them can see us!”

“Who’s inside the tower?” Thomas asked.

Oleg waved away in annoyance. “A party of hired soldiers, but we have to think of getting out of the boat alive first! The guards won’t like it, will they?”

Thomas suspected him of nervous irony. He scowled and replied gloomily, “We need to act very quickly. And accurately. But the main thing is that we’ll have to hit without a warning! That’s prohibited by the knightly code of honor.”

“They’ll sock us without a warning themselves! Once they see we are no fishermen.”

“They are one thing,” Thomas snapped stubbornly, “and we are another! We should not behave like them.”

Oleg twisted his mouth in a smirk but said nothing, sparing the knight. Being uncompromising is good for songs, but it’s no way to survive in real life. The one who lived at least thirty years, as this valiant knight did, should not tell tales of his nonconformity: no fools here, only married men, as the Saracen say.

He put things into his bag methodically, looking over the walls and corners as though he knew he would never come there again. Thomas sighed, cursing the day and hour when he resolved to deliver the Holy Grail to his native Britain. She blooms like a garden without this miraculous cup as well. He tightened his belt, checked the sword in scabbard, lowered and raised his visor, changing from an armored man to a solid metal statue.

* * *

The guards had got used long ago to the fisher boats crawling lazily within the Golden Bay. Some boats stayed on the spot for days and nights, others moved continually, sailing or rowing, as though following the fish. The guards had only to drive the boats away from the stone wall of the mooring, but hardly any of them approached it: there were bare rocks sticking out of water. Fish has no love for such places. Only two weeks before they had an occasion to use their weapons: a fool fell asleep in his boat, the rising tide brought it close to the mooring, where the drunkard was woken up by a strong blow with the thick end of a spear on his light head.

In one of the boats, they saw a fisherman naked to his waist, his strong bronzed shoulders gleaming in the sun. His fellow was steaming in his wide cloak, even the hood pulled low over his muzzle. That one must have been sunburnt, a foreign fool, his skin under the cloak red like a boiled lobster. Now he hates the daylight, and tomorrow he will get blisters all over. For the next week, his skin will be peeling off, at his moans and groans, in big shreds, like a snake’s one.

The guards sat in the shade, their backs leaned against the warm wall of the tower. One of them had a paunch bottle in a wicker basket at his knees. The sea waves lapped in two steps below, but brought very little coolness, while the sun-warmed tower emitted heat. The guards glanced wistfully at the clear blue sky: only a puny white cloud on the far edge of it, and even that one melting before their eyes, like butter on a hot pan.

In the fisher boat, decrepit and dirty, the half-naked fisherman left the rows, yawned broadly, showing his jaws to gods, scratched his sweaty breast. His fire-read hair was matted, he felt hot and filthy, shot malicious glances at his pal who sat drowsy, his hood pulled over his eyes. The light breeze and surf were driving the boat to the coast, but it was still far from the tower, so the guards only watched it, with sneers and condescension. Poor things they who spend their life catching fish, selling it in the market to get small coin, enough to buy bread and cheese… Thank Christ, we are no fishermen but skilled guards!

The fisherman reached for his cloaked mate, pushed him roughly. The other man gave a start, looked with surprise. The first fisherman roared, pointed angrily at the net dragged behind the boat. The second one adjusted his cloak, his shoulders shivered. The guard who had opened his mouth to cry the fishermen away couldn’t help a malicious grin. He winked to his partner who burst with laughter, as he recalled himself having got sunburnt some time ago and shivering in the torrid heat like in winter: a familiar thing!

The half-naked fisherman bellowed fiercely, his eyes goggled, as he pointed at the net. The cloaked one shivered, wrapped himself up, snapped back gloomily. The half-naked man almost broke into shriek, spitting, and the guards felt compassion for him. Why should one drag his boat along the strait if his net is full of fish? It’s not his fault that his stupid companion has such a piglet’s skin that gets sunburnt instead of swarthy.

The fishermen argued. The first one left his oars, shaking his fists angrily. The second one thrust him away, the half-naked man lost his feet in the rocking boat and fell on his back, his feet up in a funny way. The cloaked one stayed on the aft. When the half-naked man jumped up, swearing and shaking fists, the other one also stood up and turned out to be his height, though the half-naked fishermen looked, to the professional eyes of the guards, neither small nor weak.

They grappled near the aft. The half-naked man landed a blow that made his pal bend in waist. He all but flew over the board, but gripped the half-naked one by arm at the last moment. For a while, they tried to break each other. The guards saw muscles bulging on the half-naked man’s broad back, then the cloaked fisherman pushed his rival away again, stepped ahead. They stood face to face in the middle of the boat, devouring each other with eyes, cursing, and blaming for their coming back without fish. Almost at the same time, both of them leaned back, their fists darted forwards. An embittered brawl began. The guards heard muffled thumps.

A fight of two strong, beastly man is always pleasant to watch: it’s exciting, like a sip of heady wine. The two men in the boat ran wild quickly: the reckless sun would make anyone mad and eager to wreak out his anger on anyone. They neither yelled nor swore anymore but hurled their fists forward, trying to land a painful blow, to crush and destroy. The half-naked man got blooded, the guards hung over the board in excitement, oblivious of their bodies being in the bitter sun, out of salutary coolness. One guard bet two against one that the half-naked fisherman, though blooded, would overcome his cloaked mate: he had the muscle of a champion wrestler. Probably he had been a wrestler in circus until he got fired for bargaining with public.

The second guard hesitated. The half-naked one looks stronger, his muscle exposed, he fights like mad beast, but his rival seems to land more accurate blows. And under his cloak, he can have a knife, at least the one for cutting fish… And in that brain-melting sun, one would stab a knife uncaringly, only to see the blood of the other, hear him squealing, then rattling…

The boat was coming sidewise to the stone mooring, waves splashed against its boards. The boat rocked and swung, driven by the wind and water, raised by the tide that had covered the prominent bare stones, so the boat passed over them easily, with probably only a light scratch of its bottom on them.

The guards neighed like horses. The cloaked fisherman had blood gushing from his smashed brow: he often swept it off with hand, spreading it over his face, swore hoarsely. The half-naked man jumped on him, and both collapsed into the boat. Fortunately, they fell on the wooden bench that cracked apart. The fishermen rolled, grappling like two furious bears, into the other bench, and it went into splinters too.

One of the oars had floated away long ago, the other jolted blade-up in the water. When the half-naked man thrust his pal, the latter’s head crushed out the piece of wood with oarlock, and the second oar also went floating in the waves.

The boat was driven almost close to the wall rising from the water. If even the guards commanded to get away, the fishermen would not be able to do it without oars. They could swim after them, but the oarlocks were kicked out, as though by a hammer — what lusty fellows those fishermen were! — and the boat itself looked ready to go into splinters at any moment.

One of the guards sighed and pulled the rope forcefully: nobody was allowed to moor there. If the guards failed to drive them away, they were obliged to call for reinforcement. The massive door of the tower opened with a creak. A head in a gleaming helmet look out. As the guard saw the boat, the head vanished. At the next moment, he leapt out with sword and shield. After him, the next one came out, all clad in iron. He kicked the door shut behind him, leaned his back against it and fell drowsy at once, his head dropped and face twisted.

The new guards joined, with fascination, into watching the fight. Both bet their weekly salary on the fighters, but one, however, reached his crossbow without looking, set it against the ground, started to turn the winch slowly, drawing the steel bowstring. The metal pieces of the crossbow were red-hot, as well as the string, so the guard several times left the winch with a sigh, his eyes fixed on the fishermen.

The boat side crashed against the stone wall. The tide dragged the boat along it. Guards stretched their necks, bent over the border, one of them almost fell out, as the stone wall was rising over the water for a man’s height, even at full flow. They heard terrible rattles from the boat: the cloaked man pressed the half-naked one against the bottom, strangling him, the cloak almost covered both of them. The guards bellowed, clapped their rough hands on the stone border. Everyone was cheering up the fisherman he’d bet on.

Suddenly, the cloaked man got up and made a long creepy jump from the boat straight onto the stone wall. He pushed off the boat so mightily that it flew almost to the middle of the Golden Bay. The half-naked fisherman was also up at once, a bow in hands, a flash of iron arrowhead on.

Startled, guards had no time to draw swords before the fishermen clutched at the stone edge, pulled himself up, jumped down on their side at once. The first guard leapt forward silently, slashed with his sword. The fisherman jerked his head aside, annoyed. Surprisingly, the blade did not slice in, only grinded, as though against metal, and was almost twisted out from the dumbfounded guard’s hand. However, the sword cut the cord of the cloak, which fell down, and the guard almost dropped his weapon in astonishment.

A furious crusader knight in full armor! The guard had time to see eyes, as blue as the cloudless sky, through the visor before he had to back under a hail of terrible blows: the knight drew his huge sword in a flash. The guard felt his death close: against the knight’s two-handed weapon, his sword looked a puny twig.

Thomas slashed with all his might, attacked. The guard missed a terrible blow and fell, with bleeding head, over the border into the close waves.

Thomas turned quickly to the sea. The empty boat floated lonely on the waves, being filled with water through the cracks. Thomas’s heart froze with fear, but then he heard a splash, big hands emerged over the border, and the wonderer, soaked like a water god, jumped over it with a shout. “Why are you standing, fool? Run into the tower! One escaped!”

Thomas rushed, as though spurred, to the wide open door of the tower. On his run, he almost fell, stumbling over the crossbowman’s body with a long arrow in throat. In the doorstep, he slipped in a puddle of blood gushing out of the body of a big guard (almost twice as broad as he was tall) and hurried up, jumping over three stairs at once, then over two.

He heard a fast tapping of boots behind. The wonderer came up with him and rushed by, like a sea whirlwind, splashing water around, his wet shoulder brushed against Thomas. The knight looked with envy at his broad bare back, trickles of blood still running down it: left by the fresh liver they’d bought at the market and used for staining each other while they fought.

The wonderer vanished ahead. Thomas hurried upstairs, muttering curses. jumping over just one stair at once. He spotted fresh drops of blood. The wonderer’s arrow had injured that guard, the fourth and last one. Oleg had to come upon him before he could climb upstairs to warn his master.

The thought of the master, the dreadful Secret One, made Thomas feel creepy inside, his legs gave way. He tried running up over two stairs at once again, but got exhausted short after, because of the steel armor he had on, and dragged himself along from one stair to another, a sword in hand, another hand clinging to the rail.

Above, on the fifth floor, there was a short noise that died away at once. When Thomas dragged himself to the spot, wide streams of blood were running to meet him, two guards lay across the stairs. Thomas stepped over them and plodded on. There was a clang above again, a muffled shout. Thomas tried to run upstairs, as the wonderer had managed to, but sweat poured over his eyes, sledge-hammers seemed to be pounding in head. He felts swung from the wall to the rail, his feet far behind, he dragged them like some cast-iron pillars.

He barely had time to hug the rail when a man in armor came rolling downstairs, head over heels, followed by another one, rolling in the same way, clad in fine Saracen mail. Thomas raised his sword, but lowered it at once and half rushed, half plodded on. He heard some shouts, clang, and ringing above again. Much higher.

All but crying with impotent malice, he dragged himself up the damned stairs that seemed to be endless. Twice he splashed through blood puddles, steeped over guards who moaned and scratched walls and stairs.

When Thomas climbed on the very top, clinging to his knightly pride rather than the rail and the wall, he saw the world waving, as if he was sailing a Viking ship. He heard the rumble and pounding of blood vessels bursting in ears. Coarse black snow was falling before his eyes.

The stairs ended at a wide open door. In the depth of the big room with strange furniture, the wonderer stood with bare sword. In three or four steps from him, a frail man, in a long robe and a knitted cap, sat in a deep soft armchair. He was unarmed and cornered between two blind walls.

Thomas sobbed in utter exhaustion, slipped down the doorpost onto the floor. The wonderer wheeled round abruptly, his eyes opened wide. “Sir Thomas, are you wounded?” he inquired with anxiety.

Thomas made a sluggish gesture to show he was all right, Oleg could set to the black mage, not to let him out of sight, as he, Thomas Malton of Gisland, a noble knight, disliked them who sold their souls to devil and had nothing to do with them, that rather befitted a Pagan…

“Who are you?” Oleg demanded harshly from the man in armchair. “What is your name?”

The man stretched his thin bloodless lips in a wary smirk, spoke slowly. “You seem to know who I am. Who are you, that is the question. You look like a savage barbarian. Maybe a chieftain of those? A new star on the northern heavens? The one who will shake the universe, like Attila? Do you know who Attila was?”

“I do,” Oleg replied briefly.

The man in armchair watched him through narrowed eyes. Oleg felt the way his mighty brain worked in: analyzing, calculating options with lightning speed, tenacious, missing not a slightest nuance, quick to reject wrong solutions. “You are no barbarian,” the man in armchair said suddenly. “It is only a mask! But you could become not only a supreme chieftain of barbarians but also a rich man here, in Constantinople…” Suddenly his eyes widened. He tried to stand up but fell back into his armchair at once. His eyes goggled, as he gave out an astonished whisper. “Impossible!.. You… you are Oleg the Wise?”

“I am,” Oleg replied in a flat, lifeless voice. “You see I was the first to know you, Baruk.”

“Yes, I’m Baruk,” the man in armchair whispered. The knitted cap on his head went shaking: he laughed. “Sorry… it’s nervous. Now I see why all the attempts to take the cup, all those… ha ha!.. absolutely reliable ones failed… We were informed the cup was borne by some brass-headed fool, with a beggar pilgrim plodding at his side!”

Through the noise and rumble in ears, Thomas could barely hear half of it and understand hardly a thing, but, sitting on the floor, he snapped out hoarsely, “Sir wonderer is no beggar!”

Baruk shot a derisive, disdainful glance at the knight, gave out a short laughter. “Sir wonderer?.. I see your sense of humor, so unnecessary for the new world… What a blunder our agents made! They showed their hair, as you Ruses put it… Yes, we had to learn much about Rus’. The Secret Seven are mostly busy with it now!”

Oleg seized the scabbard without looking, drew the huge sword in with a thud. Baruk grew more confident, and Thomas alerted, started to pull his cast-iron legs closer, breathed deeply, in a haste to tame the blood pounding in ears.

Baruk leaned back deeper in his armchair, his sharp eyes flashed with predatory sparkles. “You do not look a giant… An intellectual giant, I mean. This kind of power can be felt in each of the Seven, in many grand masters and even masters. And you degraded… Wise? To make accurate forecasts, you need to perfect your mind and will rather than to gad along roads, playing a barbarian, a mercenary, or a merchant… I heard you once were the strongest one. Weren’t you? Well, a feeble will turns strong if trained, a weak mind gets working as well as a dozen of strong ones, but strong brains fade if not used… I never had any doubts about out way, but now I see how right we are!”

“You never had any doubts? Then you are hopeless.”

“A play on words?”

“Why do you need the cup?” Oleg asked gloomily.

Baruk said nothing. He grinned, as he looked at the matted-haired barbarian standing before him. The magician leaned back in his armchair haughtily, his eyes became cruel. Thomas clenched his teeth, started to get up, clinging at the doorpost. He felt a gross insult for his friend who had to stand before the black magician, a devil’s servant, and be looked at as a common man, a puny tramp, even called a beggar!

“Why?” Oleg asked again.

“A decision of the Counsel,” Baruk replied. His eyes laughed.

“No one’s personal idea,” Oleg said thoughtfully. “It makes a difference…”

“It does,” Baruk agreed jeeringly. “I heard of what you did to Fagim, a former head of Secret Seven… But will you stand up against the power of all Seven?”

Oleg was silent for a while, his face darkened. “What’s special about that cup?” he asked in a dull voice of a worn-out man.

Baruk shrugged, his eyes glittered defiantly. “The blood of Christ. Didn’t you know it?”

Oleg shook his head, his eyes kept on Baruk’s face. “It’s important for my knightly companion, but not for the Counsel. The Secret Seven knew lots of prophets! They have the rod of Zarathustra, the belt of Moses, the cloak of Buddha, the hammer of Tor, the sandals of Mahomet, the club of Heracles, the spear of Gilgamesh… and many other things of heroes, prophets, and sages stored in their secret cache. You value them as a collection, some curiosities. You are practical people, free of any superstition. I don’t believe you could apply so many efforts only to add a new item to that collection. I wonder how the cup could survive, in spite of you driving every emotional thing away…”

“Why?” Baruk asked innocently.

Oleg answered, as he felt something concealed behind that simple question. Shaping own thoughts into words can help a solution or an eyeopener to present itself. It may seem accidental, but in fact it’s the help from the inmost soul. “Your god is Progress, Civilization,” Oleg said in an even, measured voice. “And civilization has no need of such things. Moreover, they are harmful or even dangerous to it. They only make difference for culture…”

Baruk’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve answered your own question,” he told Oleg through gritted teeth.

“So… only to keep the cup away from me?”

“From any culture bearer. This brass-headed fool is one of them, as well as you, though he thinks of himself as a civilizer. He’s hundred times purer than you, that’s all the difference. He has an innocent baby’s soul.”

Oleg looked fixedly at him, his voice became thoughtful. “You did not say what true value the cup has… For us! However, that’s out of your power if that was a decision of the Counsel, not your own. Hey, Baruk, you made several attempts to kill us. Would you deny it? And I have a perfect moral right to pay you back with your own coin. You see? So, if now you swear you shall never disturb us again, we leave at once, and you can resume your observations of stars. As you are the greatest expert at heavens!”

The pounding in Thomas’s head ceased, but pain came instead, as if red-hot pig iron was tucked into his skull. The brain was boiling, filling its bone armor to the brim. Thomas got up with effort, leaned against the wall, his feet still shaking, a stitch in his side at every breath. Thomas regretted he could not stop breathing and remain alive.

“What if I shan’t?” Baruk asked. His voice remained derisive and gave no quaver. Thomas felt a chilly blow of fear.

“I’ll kill you.” Oleg sounded like a sudden blow of northern wind in that strange room piled up with thick manuscripts with Cabbalist signs on their covers.

Baruk did not stir. He watched Oleg with contempt, even with disgustful pity. “You won’t… You could do it to protect yourself… but a man sitting in peace, like me? A cripple confined to his armchair? No outlaw but the world’s best expert on stars, a researcher of the secrets of universe?”

“But you can kill a man sitting in his chair, can’t you?” Oleg asked in a constrained voice.

“I serve civilization! Progress. While you serve mere culture. We have different laws.”

Incensed, Oleg gripped the hilt, pulled the sword out slowly. He heard the ominous scraping of metal: it was like a barely audible whistle. Baruk pressed himself into the back of the armchair. He went pale, his eyes flickered with fear, but his lips managed a smile. “Oh, stop it… A play of fury. You failed to take into account that we had a long talk, so I had time to calculate and measure you. Neither you nor this brass-headed friend of yours can kill me. Just because I’m defenseless. You are hampered by your culture, and he — by his knightly prrrinciples!”

“Are you laughing at us?”

“I can’t help it! You were the ones to disarm yourself. What you are proud of is a root of your failure. I calculated both of you for a day and night ahead. I know the Brass Head has his left heel sore. In three minutes, that dump one will slip and elbow a cup off the table… And you in two minutes will scratch your nose and look at the ceiling… Can you forecast that accurate?”

“I’d love to. But I can’t,” Oleg admitted.

“You are all in vague visions and prophecies, while we have exact knowledge! Hey, wasn’t it what you strove for? The past is concealed from us, new members of the Counsel, but there are rumors that in the great antiquity you were the one to rise against the dominance of mages and magic, to uphold the knowing, knowery… I mean the research method, which now tends to be called simply science… Was it that way?”

Thomas heard everything, but understood very little of it: his head was buzzing. To avoid being an obedient fool in the damned mage’s hands, he made two steps along the wall, away from the table with a high crystal cup. Oleg glanced back at the metal sound of his feet, scratched his nose thoughtfully. There was a faint tapping above. Oleg looked up quickly. “Is anyone there?”

“They won’t come in,” Baruk dismissed. “Students.”

Hastily, Thomas backed one more step, dumbfounded at the wonderer’s having scratched his nose and looked up exactly as the warlock had foretold. Thomas felt a stitch in his left heel, staggered on his numb legs, stumbled over his own sword (it was lying on the floor since the exhausted knight had climbed into the room) and crashed down. Furious, he got up, heard a malicious laughter, gripped the sword hilt menacingly and turned round with a haughty look.

A big red apple rolled up to his feet. Thomas turned his head to the table. It lay on side, two manuscripts sprawled on the mosaic floor. Apples had rolled away in all directions, and in the middle, there were gleaming splinters of the cup.

“All exact?” Baruk asked with triumphant laughter. “The more I see of you, the more information to predict every your word, move, deed. I already have enough for a week, a month, half a year…”

Oleg gave Thomas a quick nod. “Sir Thomas, it’s time to leave. He’s a lost man. And you, Baruk… you are making a big mistake! A man, apart from his mighty mind, has a soul too! And it’s unpredictable. It has very deep caves, hard to peep into.” He turned to the entrance.

“You miserable!” Baruk shouted in fury. “Open your eyes! Nothing on earth will save you from a terrible death now! It’s clear enough even for you to see!”

Oleg stepped to the opened door, his face as dark as a thundercloud. “Off chance you’ll know… what strength is hidden in the soul,” he said in a dull voice, without looking back.

He went past Thomas, and Thomas stepped to the man in armchair, raised his giant sword. His arms were still heavy, and the sword seemed to have the weight of a warhorse armored for attack. Astonished Baruk goggled his eyes, wriggled into the soft back of the armchair, jerked his trembling arms up in fear, as if he could stop a heavy blade of high-class steel whetted to match the sharpest razor.

The sword cut the air with a swish. There was a squelch, a flop of wood on the floor, a gurgle, and a soft slap.

Oleg glanced back with disgust at the bloody jumble: the knight had cut Baruk apart together with his armchair! — and looked with amazement in Thomas’s face tired and serene.

Thomas picked up the knitted cap, wiped the bloody blade clean with it. “Let’s go?” he asked briskly. “Or take something from here?”

Oleg shook his head in astonishment. “No, my innocent baby. We need nothing from this place. Let’s go.”

They went down the damned winding stairs, but it was far easier than the same way up. Thomas livened up, the high color came back to his deathly pale cheeks, as he spoke to Oleg with animation. “At last I’ve guessed the true meaning of your mysterious ‘off chance!’ I got not a damned thing of what you were talking about, but I saw you twinned round with the black mage’s spells! It was scary, but I recalled the nail of the Savior’s cross in my sword hilt… I called for the Holy Virgin to help me withstand the demon, a servant to Satan! You are a Pagan, after all, nearly a relative to demons, so you feel awkward about fighting them. I would never raise a hand against my kin myself. Otherwise I’d have crushed those brothers long ago, and Krizhina would not shed her bitter tears…”

As Thomas walked, he shifted the bag from his back to belly, patted the prominence of the cup. Oleg recoiled instinctively, alerted in expectance of either a flash or a thunder to strike the naive knight who had just killed a cripple. But the knight’s face was clean and calm, his honest eyes gleaming. He had destroyed a fiend that came out of the Hell and went back there. It’s sinful to kill a man, but killing a demon is a feat…

Oleg sighed, accepting the new reality of the new culture, and mended his pace.

Chapter 25

They left Constantinople early in the morning and paid a double duty for their leave. Thomas could not fathom it: if they had paid their entrance to the city, why should they pay when leaving it? The guards on the gate, seeing his enormous figure and long sword, decided not to bully. They explained he had an expensive armor on and could probably sell it to barbarian chieftains, the enemies of the capital city. Thomas got furious and yelled that so-called barbarian kingdoms had plenty of own weapons: his armor was forged by Angles, while smiths in their rotten Constantinople could only hammer bad iron and good steel was brought there from East!

“And from North,” Oleg added helpfully. “From Kiev, where good Haraluzhian swords are made. The Carolingian and Merovingian swords are also valued more than the pieces of iron made here…”

He paid the duty for both of them to angry guards who’d already cried legionaries from neighbor posts for help and surrounded Thomas. The knight was itching to fight. He spoke of his knightly honor insulted, of the pride of noble Angles from the banks of Don. At last, he asked Oleg with irritation, “Sir wonderer, didn’t they offend us?”

By that time, they had passed the gate, but Thomas kept his hand on the sword hilt. “So what?” Oleg replied indifferently, immersed in his secret thoughts. “They offend, but we don’t take offence.”

Thomas looked in his calm face with inquiry, then spat angrily in the road dust. “I don’t understand you Ruses.”

“Off chance you will, sometime…”

“Oh, that mysterious ‘off chance’ again!”

Oleg smiled absent-mindedly. Thomas noticed that was the first time, for many days, when the wonderer did not grip his charms every now and then. The dome of the sky, from one horizon to another, was blue. The road went across green plains with no winding, nor making loops like a running hare. On both sides were well-groomed fields, neat white houses. Fat cattle were moving lazily, as they grazed along the edge of the forest. The air was clean and seemed especially sweet after the sewage stench of Constantinople.

Horses ran briskly into a wide stream, raised a cloud of silvery spray. Thomas looked with envy at the wonderer who had no burden of armor on him and could act in Scythian way: stoop from the saddle at full tilt, scoop the clean water with hands, splash it on to his face, screwing up with joy.

Hares darted across their road, quails flew up from the thick wheat. Twice the travelers saw a herd of wild boars at the roadside. Involuntarily, Thomas seized his useless sword, cast begging looks back at the wonderer. Oleg rode on, straight as a candle, his face seemed to be carved of stone. Before leaving the city, they had bought enough food for a week!

“Oh, how good!” Thomas said with enjoyment. “Each new day makes the road shorter and takes me closer to my snow-faced Krizhina… If no delays on the way, I’ll be on time. Even two days ahead of it!”

Oleg pointed at the tall towers blazing with crimson fire: they showed up at the very edge of their sight. “Zolochev. There we shall part.”

Thomas darkened. “Sir wonderer…” he said warily. “You are the companion I could not even dream of! Why can’t we ride together for some more time? For a week, at least?”

“If there were a way past Constantinople, we’d have parted earlier, Sir Thomas. But now all the broad space of Europe lies before us! You road goes northwest, mine turns northeast.”

“What is the name of your country?” Thomas asked in depression. “I shall tell others of the Great Scythia… er… Scythian Rus’…”

“Just say Rus’,” Oleg said again, for the countless time. “Kievan Rus’! The Red Rus’. Ah, you will forget or confuse all the same!”

Their horses, after they’d had a good rest in Constantinople, tried to break into a trot, but Oleg held them in. Thomas’s stallion bore six poods of the knight himself, two poods of his steel armor, a pood of the saddle bag, the Holy Grail and various camping thing in it, and also the horse cloth, sweat clothes, the saddle, stirrups, girths, reins… And a tired horse can hardly drag along its own ear.

Thomas all but dislocated his neck, as he turned it to watch the ruins in half a mile from the road. Being more curious than it befitted a knight, he drove his horse in gallop to them. Oleg muttered a curse but had to follow him. Any rotten thing can be found in ruins like these.

From the height of the saddle, Thomas gaped at the majestic ruins. Standing on a hill, he had a good view of the valley packed tightly with creepily gigantic remnants of palaces, city walls, grand fountains, all sticking out of the dry black soil, completely bare, with no grass growing on it. Some goats rambled at the edge of that black earth but none dared to step on it.

Thomas looked around, his glance fell on a shepherd boy. “What great people lived here?” Thomas asked him. “Which great country was it? What divine fire did destroy it?”

The shepherd boy blew his nose loudly, down to the legs of the Frank’s horse, holding each of his nostrils in turn with his thumb, wiped his palm against his dirty matted burnoose and replied gloomily, “Here sleeps my grandfather, wise Siyavush Sarhan-ogly. He knows all.”

Thomas’s eyes found the old man who was dozy in the shade. The knight rode up to him, gave a bow from the saddle. “Please tell me, wise man: what was it here?”

The old man lifted up slowly his senile eyes, full of grief and sorrow, to look at the beautiful knight. “It was the greatest of cities… With its people wealthy, healthy, and beautiful. They had everything to be happy. But while a poor man only cares of food, the one who has plenty of it seeks a nourishment for mind and soul… Unfortunately, a false prophet was passing across this land. Be damned into ages of ages the very name of Einastia! It was how he called his teaching… You see, Frank, what remained of the blooming city. And from that whole country, whose name is now lost and forgotten.”

Thomas heard a move behind: Oleg turned his horse and darted away in gallop. So pale and scared he looked that Thomas rushed after him, having forgotten at once the shepherds, ruins, and the Einastia itself. “Is your head aching from the sun? Drink some water! Let’s get into the shade, for you to lie down and have some rest!”

“No,” a hoarse groan came from the very depth of the wonderer’s chest. “Let’s go… away from here.”

They failed to reach Zolochev by night: the darkness caught them in a poor village. They spent a night there. In the morning, they watered horses, checked the horseshoes, and rode onto the road. Thomas smiled with restraint: in the short day before, they made over twenty miles. The horse will get tired over time, but even fifteen miles a day will bring me to the bank of Don with five or six days in reserve.

Early in the morning, they bumped into ancient ruins again. Thomas knew those lands bore marks of many extinct cities and nations: he saw many of them before, but none were that colossal. With glassy eyes, he gazed at the monstrous slabs. “How?.. Tell me, how could they break off such boulders? And drag them here, to the heart of desert?.. You see, no stone quarries close here!”

Oleg, grey and hunched in his saddle, looked ahead with glassy eyes. His face showed despair, his wrinkles got sharper, and the manly lines near his mouth turned bitter. “So they could…” he whispered.

“But how?” Thomas exclaimed. He felt his hair raising the helmet with such a force that its belt was about to wrench his lower jaw. “How? The stones I trimmed were hundred times smaller than these ones, but even those were a fit for giants! I saw hundred slaves harnessed in to drag each one: more hands that belts for them to seize!”

A dirty boy, clad in only a faded, colorless loincloth, gaped at the two mighty Franks. “Do you know what it was?” Thomas asked.

The boy shook his head, but as he saw the mighty iron Frank watching him with expectation, he said shyly, “A damned place.”

“Why?”

“Einastia,” the boy answered. He backed and got white, as he spoke out this terrible word. “It’s Einastia!” He ran away, showing a dirty pair of heels.

Thomas followed him with puzzled eyes. “It seems to me I’ve heard of this doctrine before… But then, if I recall it right, they ruined and destroyed everything… and here they were building until they worked their guts out and perished… No. I must have confused!”

“Certainly you must,” Oleg agreed hastily, “as you have travelled a lot. Tell me, how did your detachment storm into the gate of Jerusalem?”

Thomas livened up, the majestic slabs forgotten at once. He assumed a dignified air: his back straightened up, his chest well out, straightening the caved armor. “Sir wonderer, that was a battle!.. A battle to tell our grandchildren or even great-grandchildren of, as the courage and valor of both the defenders of the Holy Sepulcher and the brave warriors who came to take it is unlikely to be surpassed soon!”

The wonderer did not seem a quite attentive listener, but Thomas was not petty and told the story willingly, in detail. Gradually, Oleg mellowed. He even seemed to be looking in the knight’s handsome manly face with joy, but then frowned, gripped his charms.

“Wasn’t it my smile in all hundred teeth to fright you?” Thomas mocked.

“It was,” Oleg replied briefly.

“Why?” Thomas alerted.

“You are too merry, and trouble always comes unexpected… and, for some strange reason, always at the height of fun. And teeth… you have only thirty-two of them, by the way.”

“So little?” Thomas was surprised. “I’d never think… I’m a knight, however. My business is to knock teeth out in jousting, not to count them. Let the literary men count, as their academies taught them to…”

With light heart, he overrode the wonderer. Back in Constantinople, he had slayed a fiend, an adept of Evil, one of the knights of Satan. Who would dare to impede his triumphant homecoming?

Oleg rode behind. Thomas kept glancing back at him until his neck got sore. The wonderer grew darker and darker, he let not the charms out of his fingers. At last, Thomas felt the familiar creepy cold and got anxious. “Sir wonderer, haven’t we got done with it in Constantinople? We defeated such a mighty helper of Devil that souls in heaven frisk and sing praises to us! What else?”

“I don’t know,” Oleg replied reluctantly. “I feel danger, a great danger, but can’t fathom… no idea at all where it may come from.”

Thomas glanced at the Pagan charms with Christian indignation. Though they had saved their souls more than once, giving a timely warning, but still they were Pagan, impious things! If I could learn to tell fortunes by the cup, or the nail in my sword hilt, there would probably be omens from Our Lady. Far more reliable and, which is most important, Christian ones.

“You have almost nothing but beasts,” he remarked, casting jealous glances at the charms. “Wolves, bears, even dragons. And people so ugly… Some toads, birds, fish — what for? And only one sword! And one stirrup, as it never happens to be…”

Oleg gave a sudden start, as though waking from a bad dream, looked around wildly. His eyes widened in fear, as if he saw some monster springing up on their way. “Sir Thomas! Sir Thomas, we need to pass between those stone hills as fast as we can!”

Waiting for no response, he gave a shriek, whipped his horse, and burst into gallop. Thomas measured the way up to the hills by anxious eyes, spurred his horse. A destrier can run in gallop no more than three or four hundred steps. The attack of heavy chivalry is only to break the enemy’s lines, not to pursue. The knights crush into the first rows, piercing the foes with lances, then get stuck, slash heavily with swords and axes, while their foamy warhorses try to keep their legs, which are trembling with tiredness.

The horse Thomas had could carry the heavy-armored rider for almost a mile, and there were less than it to the hills pointed by the wonderer… but if danger waited there, he would make a pretty nice fighter on a half-dead horse!

The horse was speeding up, turning a terrible armored beast. Thomas could see no enemy, but his heart pounded like a hammer, blood ran in vessels noisily and briskly. He warmed up, felt a fit of the sacred battle rage that some warriors had in common with ancient heroes and gods: furious Wotan, whose name meant “incensed,” battle-fervent Beowulf, Ruslan, Tor, Boromir, Aragorn…

Far ahead, the wonderer darted, like an arrow, between two low hills formed by grey granite boulders crumbling with age, topped with young green firs that reached for the sky, their strong roots completing the ruin of hills.

Only once did the wonderer glance back: to check whether the knight was following. The stubborn magician kept calling him “a brass head,” despite the three or four thousand years that had passed since the times of brass heads. Thomas’s head was protected with good steel, no puny brass of Trojans or Hellenes. He’s darting like a huge boulder shot from a catapult. The Devil himself will not stop a brave knight at full tilt!

When Thomas’s stallion dashed between the hills — a hundred of steps from one to another! — the ground under his hooves gave a shake, a heavy rumble came from below. The horse stumbled at a tilt, lost ground, and Thomas strained in mortal fear, as he imagined himself flying heels over head in full armor. But the horse kept its hooves and mended its pace. They darted past the hill. Thomas spotted it was no hill but a ruin of very old tower or fortress… His peripheral vision caught a terrible glimpse of huge stone slabs coming apart, in smoke and thunder. The roots of young firs cracked, the ground opened wide, puffing black and grey smoke out… and within it, some monstrous, inhuman thing was rising from the bowels of earth!

He felt a blow of heat on his back. The horse wheezed in terror. The wonderer reined up far ahead, waving to Thomas. His horse pranced, eager to rush away from the scary place. “Quick!” Thomas heard a bitter shout. “You still have time!”

Thomas bent to the front arch. His horse rattled, his ears laid back as a hare’s. The wonderer turned his stallion, wrenching his lower jaw with the bridle. Thomas darted past them, only caught a glimpse of pale face and eyes goggled with despair. The road flew under the hooves evenly — a good one made by Romans! — but his horse had a rattling breath, bloodshot eyes, and the grey strip of earth was splitting into pebbles, grass, and trampled clay.

“Keep up, keep up!” Oleg cried out like a spell. He overrode Thomas again, as if there was a more terrible thing ahead and he hurried to see it first, to ward off, to protect his friend. Thomas saw the bow, sword, and arrows on Oleg’s back and his fear grew stronger: the wonderer had not even seized a weapon!

He heard a heavy crash ahead, as if a mountain collapsed. The ground under him twitched to and fro again. A terrible roar made Thomas’s blood run cold. The roar was uttered by no animal but something dreadful, neither human nor beastly. A cry of pain and rage that a livened Tower of David could utter when the boiling tar went streaming down its walls!

Thomas took a chance to glance back. He gasped, went cold, his fingers all but dropped the reins. The hill had collapsed, like a molehill, big rocks rolled down onto the road. From a huge crater, some dirty-green monsters were climbing out: each as tall as a mounted man but thrice that long, more massive, covered with bony plates that resembled stone slabs. The massive head looked like a forger, if that could be the size of a proper barrel, topped with horns and spikes, its jaws belched with black smoke, shot crimson flames out, eyes hid in the narrow slit.

The horse staggered, began to stumble. Thomas glanced back in fear. The first monster crept down, from the ruined hill onto the road, sniffed the tracks loudly and rushed, in giant leaps, after him. The other beasts were also coming: their bright-green bodies covered with duckweed from top to toe, as though they’d just come up from underground bog, each had a sharp bony crest along its back, jaws looked like a burning stove. The earth gave a moan when they dashed after the riders. Making heavy leaps, they looked like giant frogs whose bodies were stretched in a jump.

“Sir wonderer!” Thomas cried desperately. “With deep regret I inform you that you’ll have to rely only on yourself! I can’t be helpful anymore: my horse will fall in forty-eight steps…”

“Won’t he make hundred?” the wonderer bellowed, as he pulled up abruptly.

“I know my weight, my armor…”

“Then make the rest fifty-two by shanks’ mare!”

The horse rocked on the run, then fell. Thomas had taken his heavy boots out from iron stirrups, so he jumped down heavily. His tired legs failed him, he sprawled, face first, in the road mud and dust. A strong hand yanked him up by shoulder, all but wrenched it out, a horrible voice roared in his ear, “Run to that oak!”

Thomas forced himself to run as fast as he could. Right or wrong the wonderer is, he flounders, not waits meekly for the death to come. Thomas darted like a deer, jumped over logs and rocks. He felt amazed with own might but then saw the wonderer’s horse galloping by his side: Oleg held the knight’s cloak behind firmly, helping him in his run and jumps.

The roar and crash behind grew louder. They felt heat, smelt burning. Thomas tried to pull out his sword as he ran, but Oleg’s hand hit his elbow painfully. Thomas did not object: he only tried to survive in that run. Dying on the run would be a shame to a knight who spent several years running around the castle with a heavy rock on his shoulders, as that was a common way of training young Angles…

The oak was getting closer, but everything swung and blurred in his eyes, his knees became weak. Thomas could not fall: the strong hand dragged him along. Suddenly he sank into icy cold, got stuck in it, like a fly in amber, but the wonderer yelled, pulled him ahead. With dim surprise, Thomas found himself up to the neck in water. The wonderer’s hot horse snorted and hoofed nearby, splashing Thomas all over. He seemed to hear his armor, red-hot with the mad run, hissing in the water and see the whitish steam raising.

Oleg dragged Thomas out onto the bank. “Up the slope!” he croaked, hoarse and panting with effort. “Water keeps them.”

He vaulted off, his horse remained on trembling legs, all four spread wide apart, and the two men ran on… Precisely, the wonderer started to run but then came back to seize Thomas, in his armor with water gushing out of all slits, dragged the knight, as heavy as a mountain, made him move on. Thomas often fell in exhaustion, his wet armor got caked in earth, dry leaves, splinters. A frantic wasp flew into his open visor and stung his lip.

The wonderer yelled for him to hurry. Finally, Thomas burst after him into thick green shrubs and fell down, motionless. There was a din in his head, a clatter of hammers in his ears, his heart trying to break the steel armor from inside.

The wonderer’s legs were jutting out from the bush ahead. With effort, Thomas dragged his body, as heavy as a dead armored horse, to fall next to him. The wonderer was watching the road through the twigs he’d moved apart. Thomas, faintly surprised at own endurance, managed a turn on his side, looked out too.

In hundred steps down the slope, a wide stream was gleaming in the bright sun: so shallow that one could clearly see small colored stones on its bottom, pebbles, water plants, and even small fishes, shiny in the sunlight. Thomas groaned with vexation. I had such a hard time crossing it as though it were a sea. I all but drowned!

On the other side of the stream, huge monsters, about ten of them, were stamping their feet, hitting each other with bone shells, bursting with mechanical roars. Thomas convulsed, dug his iron elbows deeper into the earth, clenched both his jaws and fists. Once he had seen a fire-spitting mountain: huge rocks flying out of its truncated peak, with terrible thunder, the Hell’s fire and black smoke rising from it, and the blazing earth, fiery and melted, streaming down the slope. The beasts seemed to have climbed out of that mountain, which was called volcano. In the name of the Pagan blacksmith god, but, in truth, there is no smithy underground but Hellish stoves for sinners. The Lord, in his mercy, sometimes allows people to see from a distance what lies below, for them to fear and abandon sin…

“Secret Seven,” the wonderer said with unbearable bitterness. “Unchain these monsters! A savagery.”

“Secret Six now,” Thomas replied as firmly as he could. “Where were they chained?”

“There below. In the times of old gods, these beasts lived on earth, as numerous as rabbits… Then heroes destroyed them. The first Secret One hid the remaining ones inside a rocky mountain.”

“For such an occasion?”

“Just to save them from extinction. He didn’t think much of it, just saved… The first Secret Ones were powerful sorcerers, always at war with great heroes, the founders of new tribes and nations.”

“The Secret Ones have always been demons?”

Oleg hesitated, looked slantwise in the knight’s honest face, then turned away, replied reluctantly, as though forcing himself, “Wars would not last that long… and not begin that often either if only one side were right. Have you had a rest?”

“I need two or three years of it…” Thomas said in a miserable voice.

“Stand up, Sir Thomas! Your beautiful Krizhina is waiting. The beasts are slow-minded, but soon they’ll guess to fell that giant oak. Beavers would have already guessed that! Then they’ll drag it here and throw across the water to reach the other bank.”

Oleg rose, and Thomas, with a groan, got up to his trembling feet. Oleg watched him with admiration and sympathy: the knight had not taken the smallest of iron pieces off, but carried two poods of steel on himself and the heavy two-handed sword steadfastly!

“Why can’t they cross… as we did?” Thomas asked in a choking voice.

“Born in a hot desert. The ancient one, so scorching that… Here they are freezing, Sir Thomas! Really freezing!”

Thomas who was dying of heat gave a sob of either exhaustion or envy for the animals who were cold, dragged himself after the wonderer. They forced their way through shrubs, climbed up a long rocky slope, then hurried across a steep hillside. Tired, Thomas kept bumping into huge boulders, his armor thundered, as though he were falling from the wall of the patrician house down onto the stone-paved street in Constantinople. He hissed with helpless rage, like a furious snake. “Where we run?”

“Save your breath!” The wonderer broke through the green thicket, held the branches for Thomas. He forgot that the knight’s armor was impenetrable even for sabers and spears and the visor was down to save his eyes from sharp twigs. The ground was trembling beneath Thomas, as though it were one of the beasts running, about to jump on Oleg’s shoulders.

Thomas breathed hoarsely, like a winded horse, his lips in yellow foam. Stumbling at every step, he groped for the sword hilt and rattled out, “Sir… wonderer… I… stay…”

“Run!”

There was a sudden terrible roar behind, then a heavy strike. The ground vibrated, they heard a fast crackle of shrubs and trees. Oleg grabbed Thomas, dragged him on, pushing and kicking, through the thickset up the slope. “They’ve crossed!”

“I shan’t…” Thomas forced out. “They’ll come up… I saw their paws… Better fight with honor… Face to face…”

“If only you could! Swords do no harm to them!”

“I’m k-knight… Unworthy… like hare…”

“Sir Thomas, fortify your heart! The run is courageous, and the fight cowardly!”

Thomas did not get it: his head was pounding again. Beyond himself, urged on by the wonderer, he dragged his feet to the crest of a hill, long alike a lizard. Far below, a broad road curved round its foot, a column of red dust driven along by wind. Across the road, there was a yellow wall of ripe wheat, and along the way, just near the foot of the hill, on which the travelers stood half-dead, some pilgrims were plodding, in rows by two or three: ragged, half-naked or in torn cloaks, with heads shaved or overgrown with long hair. Three or four scores in total. All pilgrims looked miserable, but almost each one dragged a huge chain, fetters, or iron rings.

“If you don’t want Krizhina to cry her eyes out, run to them!” Oleg breathed out in a parched voice.

“But I don’t…” Thomas felt a strong shove on back, made two steps involuntarily, lest he fall, and got dragged on, as though by a rope: trees and shrubs rushed to meet him, he moved his legs very quickly, in fear of ramming into a thick tree or stumbling over a stone. He clutched at branches as he ran, but adequate bushes seemed to be left behind, and those he met were feeble, easy-tearing like rotten cloths, leaving green twigs in his hands. The twenty-three stones of his bone, muscle, and steel dashed down the slope like an avalanche. He stifled again with heat and flicker in his eyes, started to dream of bumping into a tree, or even a boulder as tall as himself…

The greenery finished abruptly, he darted in the dust. His legs failed to bear up the body that suddenly got heavier, the ground jumped to meet him, he clashed face to face with it, heard a crunch and a crackle, felt hot and salty in his mouth, as he was rolled and, finally, sprawled in the hot dust.

When he looked up madly, a shaggy old man was standing before him: with a spade-like beard, clad in a tattered cloak, all in patches and rents, an iron chain over his shoulder, each link the size of a hand, its end dragged in the road dust. “What a wonder is it?” the old man asked in a startled voice.

Thomas set both hands on the ground, sat up with effort. He felt a stitch under his ribs, shook his head, trying to regain his senses.

A heavy body was rolling down swiftly from the steep slope, crushing through shrubs. Thomas heard a scream, “In the name of Great Rod! Of Christ, Buddha, Mahomet, Wotan and all the gods! Help!!!”

Oleg jumped onto the road, with his eyes goggled madly, soaked and shaggy all over, like a mouse thrown ashore by the surf. The old man patted sedately his grey beard, luxuriant, though with burdocks and burrs in it, shot a sharp glance from under his overhanging prickly eyebrows. “If we can… What’s the matter?”

“We are chased!”

“In this world they always chase someone. Come to ours.”

“I was in it,” Oleg said quickly. His broad chest was heaving wildly, he kept glancing over his shoulder. “Now I’m in the Great Reclusion.”

His fingers made a strange sign: so fast that Thomas could not see it, but the old man’s eyes widened. The pilgrim bowed his head — unwillingly, as Thomas spotted — and spoke in a different tone, “We recognize… But we are still in the Small Reclusion, which, as you know, prescribes to leave mundane affairs behind.”

“A special case!” Oleg cried. He glanced over again, with fright. A hollow rumble was heard from that side, the ground was quivering.

The old man spoke back strictly, in a rattling voice that seemed derisive to Thomas. “For you? Temptation has many faces, you know… We left mundane deeds behind.”

A mighty roar came from behind the crest, then a crackle of broken shrubs. Big rocks flew down the slope onto the road, ahead of the monsters who’d brought them down.

Thomas rose to his weak feet, drew out his sword and stood at the roadside. “Sir wonderer! Haven’t we fought just in two?”

Oleg cast an incensed look at the old man, behind whom the silent pilgrims stood in a dense crowd, their eyes dull and lackluster, their thin swarthy hands clutching thick staffs. The wind stirred their rags with disgust. Thomas smelt unwashed bodies, wrinkled his noble nose, and moved away to the very edge of the road.

“Yes,” Oleg sighed. “Our last battle, Sir Thomas!” He pulled his huge sword out slowly, walked tiredly up to Thomas. The knight looked slantwise in his companion’s sad face. Not a hint of fear in it, only dead tiredness. Thomas felt proud for such a valiant friend sent to him by Holy Virgin. If they die, they’d be fighting to their last breath. Let the Hell’s beasts be invincible, a true man won’t give his life away that simply! One should fight, kick, and even bite as long as he can: let Satan have no easy victory!

The ground trembled. The green cover of the hill vanished, as the grey-green wave rolled over it. There was crackle and crash, stones dropped. What the monsters left behind, was black friable soil: no shrubs on it anymore, all twigs and even leaves gone, trampled into the ground along with rocks.

Thomas planted his feet wider apart, gave Oleg a cheering-up glance — the last one in that life! — gripped the sword with both hands. The monsters rushed down from the mountain, unstoppable. Only one of them spotted the knight’s gleaming figure on the way, mistook it for an iron pillar dug into the earth, tried to halt, setting its paws on the ground ahead, but was driven on down the slope, ripping it open as though with four giant ploughs.

Chapter 26

Thomas bellowed, forcing the battle fury up in himself, stepped forward. The animal was driven up to him. Screaming, Thomas brought his sword down on the huge head covered with bony plates. Splinters flew about, like small silvery fish, the sword was all but wrenched out of hands, as if he had struck with all his might on an anvil, fingers got numb and aching. Thomas could barely keep the sword, so heavy it got at once, his mouth cold and dry, his heart stopped beating. In place of three thick horns on the beast’s snout, there now were only two — and a slantwise-cut stub in place of the third one. The monster uttered an insulted roar, darted on his enemy. Thomas was burnt with heat and fell down at once, as the beast shoved him with its side. Thomas rolled, his sword still in hand, jumped up studiedly and struck again: on the long green moss-covered tail that was sliding past him. The sword was cast away, its blow left a whitish stripe on the tail, and Thomas saw it was a different animal, while the one with cut-down front horn, roaring madly, broke into the lines of perplexed pilgrims.

He heard crash and roar, caught glimpses of horrible paws, as the huge animal was rolling on the ground in a ball, crushing rocks and leaving a wide stripe of dead soil, trampled to the hardness of stone, behind. Terrified, Thomas could not believe his eyes: the monster and the wonderer had grappled each other, both roared, wrestled, rolled on the ground… Thomas yelled, rushed to them with his sword raised, but a mountain bumped into his side, his armor crunched, and Thomas was blown away like a leaf torn off the tree.

The earth trembled, as if mountains were collapsing. The mad roar was about to break his skull. Thomas managed to raise himself a bit, feeling as though all of his bones were… more than broken: reduced to hash, with the largest fragment as big as his nail. With a moan, he leaned against his sword. A green log hit his legs at once. Falling flat, Thomas caught a glimpse of the animal, which had knocked him down with the very end of its tail. The beast roared with pain and fury: the wonderer took a grip of its jaws and was tearing them apart, as though to look into the red crater of throat. The foaming blood, strangely white, gushed out. The animal gave a howl, waving its paws blindly. One of them caught the wonderer’s belt, the strong claws about to welt him. With a dirty curse, the wonderer left the jaws and gripped momentarily, with two hands, the animal’s thick paw. Before Thomas could say “mom,” the paw gave a dry crunch, as though a thick pole broken, the terribly roaring beast collapsed on its side, started to beat the air convulsively with the rest three paws. The wonderer jumped aside, picked up his sword.

Thomas got up to his fours, had time to see another monstrous animal jumping on the wonderer before something pounced on Thomas’s back with a crunch, pressed him into the hard trampled ground. He lay half-stunned, waiting for terrible jaws to touch the back of his head, to come together once and bite his armor through, like a forest nut, and spit out the iron shell after having milled him, Thomas Malton, a noble Angle from the banks of Don, with strong teeth…

Suddenly the noise in his head subsided, but he heard roar, dull thumps, and shouts instead. With effort, he turned in the pit, which his iron armor had made in his fall, to see the blue sky and, against the blue, the bustle of monstrous bodies and clawed paws.

Then the wonderer cropped up into his eyesight. Oleg breathed heavily, his face wild, his eyes goggled still. Blood trickled down from his forehead, poured over eyebrows. Irritated, the wonderer wiped it off with his blooded palm. “Are you alive, Sir Thomas?”

Thomas tried to rise but fell prone: his arms were fragile as grass blades. Oleg supported him by shoulder. “And… beasts?” Thomas asked in a husky voice.

Oleg waved away. “All right. Fighting, what else?”

Thomas sat up, shook his head, trying to regain his senses. He was sitting among broken and squashed twigs, limpid juice oozing from them, their leaves carpeting the ground. From the roadside, crash and heavy rumble were coming, along with heavy strikes and mad shouts.

“Lie down,” Oleg said. His breast rose frequently, the air rattling and howling in it, like a snowstorm in a chimney. He wiped the blood off his forehead again. His eyebrow was matted, his copper-red hair stuck up in a strange way. “Lie… They’ll cope on their own.”

Thomas got up with effort, leaning on his sword, like an old man on a staff. He turned to the road: that last blow — with a tail, as far as he could recall — had flung him past the roadside. On the road, in puffing bitter dust, inconceivable things were going on: the last beasts had run down the slope, roaring and thundering, and pilgrims darted about, brandishing their staffs and chains. Three monsters, with their heads smashed and spines broken, lay at the roadside, their bony shields, impossibly thick, gaping with terrible cracks. Thomas was startled to see the head of the nearest monster flattened, as though between the hammer and the anvil of unthinkable size, its hind paw torn out with a bit of meat. Huge white gristles seen in the horrible wound, still oozing with blood, which made the ground hiss and swell in blisters.

The last animal, a late one, thundered down the slope, came running into the old, grey-haired man, the one who had denied assistance to travelers so coldly. Displeased, he stepped aside, socked the beast on head with his staff. Thomas expected to see the immediate death of old fool, but the colossal head, armored in thickest shell and resembling a granite boulder, cracked under the staff blow, broke in halves, like a rotten egg. Small splinters flew in all directions, blood gushed out in thick gurgling mass. The animal’s broken mug hit the ground. The beast, unable to stop at once, turned overhead and remained on its back, its broad crest pressed down with a crunch.

Along the road, in hundred steps both on the left and on the right from it, pilgrims were hitting the beasts angrily with staffs, crutches, chains, and fetters. The air was full of terrible crunch and crash, death rattles and dreadful howls. Stupefied, Thomas saw that one pilgrim seized a monstrous creature by its thick tail, yanked it up into the air, whirled overhead, as though to knock down other animals with it as a club — but there was a loud crackle, the green tail remained in hands, while the beast flew over the road and collapsed, with bony thunder, onto the trampled shrubs. The suddenness of it made the pilgrim fall on his back, into a puddle of whitish blood and entrails of another dead animal. The man was thin, yellow, his face gaunt, his skinny body covered with rags.

Thomas jumped up in fear when a heavy hand fell with a clang on his shoulder. “They’re almost done with it. Let’s go to them.”

“Aren’t they angry with us?” Thomas said, his voice was unsteady. “We brought the beasts on them… Did you run here on purpose?”

“I felt our Russian pilgrims going,” Oleg replied evasively.

The last animal was finished off by crutches, its shell cracked, as though beaten by iron logs, blood spurting out. One pilgrim threw away with disgust his crutch, with green moss and small bone splinters stuck to it. The crutch fell in front of Thomas, went into the stone-hard ground for a length of hand. Driven by natural gratitude, Thomas hurried to stoop for it, to pick up and clean, as it was not disgraceful even for a king to render services to ecclesiastics, even those of other religions…

His iron fingers slid off with a grinding sound. Thomas get none of it, gripped the crutch with both hands, hooking it from below, and jerked up — but it seemed to have grown into the earth. Thomas felt as though gripping the middle of the protruding root of a two-hundred-year-old oak tree. He saw a friendly banter in Oleg’s tired face, bit his lip, frowned, took a firm stand and yanked the crutch up with all his might.

He felt his legs breaking the hard crust of trampled earth, sinking into it, but that amazing crutch had only one of its ends raised a bit! Thomas went crimson, trying to hold it, but the crutch slipped off, squelched on the ground. That time Thomas could see, for sure that was neither his imagination nor illusion, that the earth was shaken with its fall and the crunch subsided as if it were mud, not well-trodden soil, as solid as stone.

Oleg embraced Thomas, urged him to the battlefield. “Leave it, or you’ll bust a gut… No less than forty poods of iron in that staff. Their chains and fetters the same.”

Thomas was astonished. “Why?”

“To make them heavier,” Oleg explained shortly.

Thomas turned his head, looked with mistrust, but the wonderer’s face was absolutely honest. “Why?” the knight asked again.

“That’s a feat, as Ruses see it. Asceticism! It’s only hard to defeat a dragon until you try to defeat yourself… No beast that brutal, strong, and cunning. A beast that always prevails: by ruse or by caress, by stubbornness or sweet words…”

They came up to the wonderers who were seated tiredly on the huge bodies of dead monsters. Some pilgrims breathed heavily, scowled, one waved his blooded hand, others had a quite talk with their heads close.

The old man with spade-like beard, his cloak even more torn, met Thomas and Oleg with his shrill senile voice. “Who is it, eh? Just two shrimps, but look — beasts from the very hell run after them! So big knobs indeed? Hares would do to hunt you down!”

Thomas blushed, threw his hand on the sword hilt. Oleg seized his elbow, spoke back peacefully, “Who judges by clothing… My companion — he’s from the land of Angles, the former Tin Isles[17] — had also thought you, in your rags, would not do the beasts!”

“Tin Isles?” the pilgrim leader said, still annoyed. “Ah, the Land of Red Wolves?.. Where Taurus led the Old Believers to?.. I see, no way for them to know old ways there. And you didn’t tell him either?”

“I’ve been chock-full with other matters,” Oleg replied.

A hunched old man came up to them, dragging his swollen feet. The end of his dirty grey beard was tucked under his rope belt. He had a thick iron chain dangling on his neck: each link of it as large as a fist, its end dragged on the ground, leaving a wide trace. With his fingers burnt on that plain-looking crutch, Thomas looked at the chain closely — and suddenly felt it had more iron in each of its links that his heavy armor in total! “Let’s stop for dinner?” the old man asked his leader in a hopeful voice.

The old man with spadish beard snapped back angrily. “Again?.. You had your meal yesterday! Enough to wait till supper tomorrow. The beast within should be tamed, its spine broken!”

Thomas glanced around furtively. The wonderers sat in rows on the backs of dead animals, sad and ruffle-feathered like hungry crows in the rain. One walked among the monsters, prodded their jaws with his staff, examined their teeth. His belt had a gloomy glitter: broad and tight, made of metal with some strange writing carved in.

The pilgrim leader followed the glance of the gleaming armored knight, his sharp eyes flickered with some emotion. “Well, we can have some rest. But don’t give up to temptation, don’t give up! The servants of Black God wait for you to… As the sun sets, we shall plod on. Less heat and flies on the way.”

They made a fire far away from the road. The dead monsters were dragged into a huge pit and thrown over with earth and stones. However, the pilgrims had cut a couple of animals first: with knives or bare hands. Thomas turned away: he could not bear to see the dreadful entrails that had nothing in common with those of deer, boars, or even bears.

The pilgrim leader saw to the liver being taken from the biggest animals. Soon after, strange fragrances started to drift over the green valley. Thomas sat humbly where Oleg had seated him, his nostrils sniffed the fresh-roast liver avidly, but his eyes recoiled in fright from the far road. He could see it as a twisting fair stripe with strange spots of dark, broken in one place and restored with great effort after, crawling out from pools of blood. From far away, a carriage was coming, attended by riders. What would they think as they see the road flooded with strange blood, all in dents and furrows that tell of a terrible battle? However, a light wind had already raised a cloud of grey dust to bury at least some part, if not all of it. By the time they have enough of their marvel and reach the nearest village, there will be no traces on the road at all and the words of astonished travelers will be taken as tales.

When Oleg, after a long talk he had with the leader of pilgrims, came back to Thomas, the knight whispered in amazement, “I don’t understand… They are heroes!”

“They were,” Oleg dismissed.

“What do you mean? They are! They scattered the beasts, slew, and crushed!’”

Oleg cheered up and laughed. “Sir Thomas, one can live a life but remain a child. Heroes come out of childhood earlier than other people, as they in early age get everything other men can only dream of: glory, money, power, and princesses… Heroes have time to get fed up with that, to understand that’s not what really matters…”

“And become wonderers?” Thomas asked with distrust.

“They come out of heroes, anyway. In search of themselves. Many of them become wonderers to obtain Truth in their travels. They try to pick the easiest way: thinking the Truth has already been found somewhere and all they need is come and see it.”

“And what is real?”

“Truth is to be found in your own self. One man meets God on his way, another — while staying at home. Isn’t that true?”

The pilgrim leader sliced the monster’s liver in big pieces, gave one to Thomas and one to Oleg. Thomas took it with both hands and thought, with a gloomy irony, that old man with hungry eyes must be a real glutton. After eating such a slice, one can easily do without food not only till next evening but for whole week! Next to him, Oleg crunched the roast liver loudly. As he gnawed deeper in it, blood oozed from the raw inner part. Oleg’s eyes were thoughtful as if he watched some very far thing beyond this world. He paid no heed at all to his bloody fingers.

Thomas made himself eat it. Who else, in all the Crusader army, can boast having tasted the liver of the Hell’s beast?

On the other side of him, a gaunt ragged pilgrim was sitting, a thick hefty chain on his shoulders. He hadn’t take it off even for dinner. By stealth, Thomas tried to move the end that lay on the ground but the chain seemed to be rooted in it, pressed into the soil at a finger depth.

I don’t understand, he spoke sadly to himself, what strength do these strange men seek, which is more than strength? What power over power? What wonderful things are they going to achieve by denying… Goodness, a fool can see what they deny!

He felt strange, as though he spent all his life walking past the treasure visible to everyone except for him, a blind one. Would he also see it if he stripped off his armor, slipped into rags, denied the joys of life and walked bare-headed out in the rain and snow, as a beggar?

He chewed mechanically, his eyes fixed on the emaciated ragged men, on their tatters, chains and fetters, their scabbed bare feet. “I can’t get it…” he whispered sadly. “Can’t get…”

Oleg darkened, turned away. Will a worm of doubt infest even this beautiful, healthy, muscular body? Will the knight in his prime, to the terror of his family and friends, take his armor off, leave for a cave or join the wandering pilgrims?

After all, it is the easiest way to seek Truth. To sever from the noisy base world, false and venal as it is, to cut yourself off with the wall of reclusion, to stay one on one with God. No birth without pain. Only pain and suffering can wake up the soul: it either aches or sleeps. However, ordinary reclusion is not the strongest pain. Mind the Great one!

Having parted with the wonderers, they plodded to the nearest village and bought a horse for Thomas. They would got it for Oleg too if not the ill wind that brought the host’s wife to. She went screaming, dug her nails in her husband’s face. All Oleg and Thomas could do was to save their purchased horse by a hasty retreat. Thomas gave a hint of offering twice that much for the second horse but Oleg dragged him out of the house. “This land is rich, one village close to another. We’ll buy a better one.”

“I feel awkward, sir wonderer! I, a crusader knight, have a horse, and a priest…”

Oleg gave a restrained smirk. At the beginning of the journey, the valiant knight was not conscience-stricken by the sight of the exhausted pilgrim dragging himself, covered with road dust and mud, by the side of his stallion in his luxurious cloth. The old god prescribed a noble knight to be high and a common man low, and Christ, the young god, consolidated and sanctified it! Man is eager to slip into the bad, but he can also come to humanity rather quickly. “Sir Thomas,” he said in a promising voice. “Up from that hill, I’ll be riding such a stallion that yours will seem a plow horse next to him!”

Thomas shifted his jealous gaze to the horse he rode. He managed to buy a huge, mighty draft horse, which had evidently been brought there from the lands of North. I paid thrice its price, but what is money when knightly honor is at stake? And that coin had come to them easily, according to the wonderer who claimed having either found it or taken from a hare running by.

As the wonderer walked, he often tip-fingered his charms. Thomas looked at them with dual feeling. The wooden things were impious, Pagan, but the Holy Virgin, in her unfathomable mercy, allowed their existence still. Nothing on earth is done without Her leave.

“If we don’t buy there,” Thomas said decisively, “we’ll change!” On the way ahead, he could see five houses, a score of sheds, and the sweep of the well reaching for the sky. A goat for sale was unlikely to be found there, not to mention horse, so he would have to dismount, getting his body troubled but soul relieved.

Oleg glanced slantwise at the knight who rode like a tower bound with iron: unshakeable and indestructible. His blue eyes went dark and dim, as though his brave soul was wandering in doubts, so unusual to it. He seemed to be still among the wonderers, smelling unwashed bodies, hearing the clang of heavy chains, seeing horrible sores left by fetters that had worn the live flesh through to the bone. And he recalled his valiant friend, also a wonderer, explaining in a strange pitiful voice, with his eyes turned away, that only wonderers were humans, while others — pre-humans. Back then, Thomas had flared up with just indignation, righteous fury for the profane words, but now he returned to them silently, turning them this and that way.

When they were eating the roast liver, Oleg asked venomously what is the difference between man and animals. Thomas blurted out that man can speak and animals can’t, so the difference is speech and mind. But Oleg said that animals also speak to each other: in howls, chirps, or squeaks. So man is also the cleverest of animals… and the most violent, as he even kills the likes of him, but still only an animal. What is the difference indeed?

May it be fetters? Thomas thought angrily. He cast curious furtive glances at the wonderer who walked on the right of his horse, raising road dust with each step. The wonderer got grey all over, his bronzed shoulders and jack of the same color, his face glistened with sweat.

Surely, Thomas went on angrily, no animal will impose fetters or other heavy thing on himself. Neither will any man, common or noble. And what is man? According to the wonderer, that’s still an animal, a pre-human. But there are men who came from animals into humans. They are few, that’s why they seem strange and unfathomable to most people. But what is fathomable to everyone? The one who’s neither a fool nor a wise man, not too weak and not too strong, his heart neither too faint nor too brave… And strongmen, wise men, heroes, prophets — they are all strange. They seem odd to ordinary people. Someone might have found strange even the quest of his: from a rich peaceful land, from own castle on Don into the strange world where death waited for him at every step, where he starved, suffered, had hard times, fell from tall towers, often slept, like a dog, on a hay of straw… And was it normal that he kept bearing the mortally dangerous cup, instead of leaving it and rushing to embrace his loved one?

The wonderer walked deep in thought. Thomas, high in his saddle, was the first to notice a rider on the road far ahead. “Oho! I’m afraid we’ll have to fight!”

The rider rushed towards them in heavy gallop. Thomas cheered up, leaving his reflections, so uncommon for a noble knight. The stranger’s horse looked like a rock of black basalt, while the rider looked a smaller rock, but massive, heavy, menacingly huge all the same. Black crows were flying over him. Thomas felt cold between his shoulder blades as he grasped those were no crows but clods of earth hit off by the giant horseshoes.

The stranger was impossibly broad in shoulders, thickset and stout, some ancient beastly might felt in him. He was clad in a coat of thick metal rings, his head in a glittering helmet, as large as a beer caldron, the left side of his breast protected with extremely broad shield: the size of a barn door. Thomas expected to see a sword, but the man had a heavy spiked mace hanging on his right elbow instead. Across his saddle, in no knightly way at all, he had a thick spear with head of plain steel.

The rider pulled up. The travelers stopped in five steps from him. The stranger’s eyes measured Thomas in an open, impudent way. Thomas frowned, straightened up haughtily, his hand moved to lower the visor, but he retained from it: he knew that kind of jealous looks. Brigands attack for plunder, but there is another sort of strange… yes, strange humans! In the young Britain, that sort is called errant knights. They wander along the roads of that land, still semi-wild, in search of the fight itself, persist in it until they find a stronger knight and even then try to get even with him. From bloody combats, they gain nothing but wounds and injuries. Thomas had been one of them, and remained one of them still but, whether influenced by Oleg or unsettled by the recent meeting with forty wonderers, he spoke to the stranger first, and spoke peacefully. “Greetings to you, sire! May your road be short.”

The rider gave him a gloomy once-over and did not stir, just bellowed in a deep voice that sounded like a roar of angry bear. “Short? Are you the one who will shorten it?”

“I may try. Why not?”

“Let’s see who is stronger,” the unknown warrior agreed. “I’ve met none of my equals yet, but you look a strong young oak… And I don’t recall you among champions. But work is first, and fun second. Where do you wend your way from?”

Thomas noticed the rider glanced at Oleg with evident unfriendliness, while Oleg watched him with sympathy and some strange compassion.

Before the knight could flare up of the stranger’s demanding question, Oleg replied in an even, placid tone. “From Jerusalem. Bowed to the Holy Sepulcher, which the crusaders won from Saracen last year, bathed in Jordan, been to cypress groves… Now coming back home.”

“Through Tsargrad?”

“No other way available.”

“How is it there?” the rider demanded menacingly.

Thomas frowned, put down his visor with a thud. With a broad gesture, he slapped on his thigh where the sword hilt was jutting up.

“Unrest,” Oleg replied peacefully.

“New nations attack?”

“Barbarians? They too, but now an Idol is said to have appeared there. He and his have plundered some churches, threw icons out, covered their horses with chasubles…”

The rider went crimson and scarily huge. His prominent eyes got bloodshot, he croaked in a fierce voice turning a beastly roar. “How could you allow?”

Oleg moved his shoulder in vexation. Thomas felt pleased for his friend, as he saw Oleg watching the giant warrior with not a ghost of fear. “Has it been a long time,” Oleg spoke with displeasure, “since we Ruses plundered Tsargrad? And now we defend it?”

“Our Christian shrines are there!” the rider bellowed.

“Not mine,” Oleg said in a dry voice. His face darkened. “Not ours at all, you blockhead.”

Thomas interfered, fearing that the rider may mistake the wonderer’s words for weakness or cowardice. “We don’t care a damn of your right-cephalous shrines! I’m left-cephalic, and my noble friend, though he walks on foot — a hero with his oddities — professes the old faith of his forefathers, or maybe his great-grandfathers…”

“Shut up, your iron thing!” the stranger barked, without turning his big head to the gleaming knight. “And you, wonderer! Aren’t you ashamed? I’ve met you once and heard more of you. Twice as strong as me, but wandering by roads, careless as a song bird that pecks dung! You lack boldness, and skill too. You should have taken the vile Idol by paw — or what he has instead? — and smash against the wall, for all the palace to shake, the domes to drop from churches! A wet spot you’d leave of him, and there’d be an end to it.”

Thomas puffed in rage, his sword half-bared. He excited his horse with the bit, choosing a good position to strike.

“Why should I matter a scuffle within a foreign city?” Oleg replied in vexation. “Each month a new Idol appears there. With his supporters! They call their leader a prophet, and the leader of others — an Idol, and others do it the way round, though I can barely tell them apart. Tsargrad is a rotten city. If her people don’t mind who rules them, why should we mind it?”

The hero goggled his eyes, his breath got heavy. “How dare you… What do you say? Tsargrad is a holy city! There’s the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church. That’s the place our Russian faith comes from!”

Oleg’s face got darker again, he gnashed his teeth. He looked as though he had a stabbing, bitter heartache. At once, Thomas felt a savage hate for the stranger, drew his sword, turned his stallion and made him back, to have a good running start.

“Russian,” Oleg repeated in a flat voice. His cheek gave a twitch, he stood as pallid as a dead man. “Your Patriarch bows and scrapes before the Idol, the basileus, before any prince who holds him in fist. Those left, Catholic believers don’t bow, after all! They see faith as faith and power as power. Fool you are! A fool of short memory… But is that your fault?”

The rider devoured him with fiery eyes. All but fuming with grey smoke, he puffed up, grabbed his mace, but made a great effort to restrain himself, only barked out with fury. “Fool?! Don’t I remember that our holy Russian land has always kept the faith of Christ? Our forefathers prayed to Christ and Saint Nicholas! Filthy Pagan you are, the Hell’s fire will burn you!.. Take off your rags, now! And your basts too!”

Thomas bent forward in his saddle, cried at the top of his voice, “Sir wonderer! Make way!.. And you, churl, do fortify your spirit before I knock it out, to your foolish Orthodox Christ who’s not a patch on our Catholic one!”

Oleg turned to him, as though stung, thrust his hands over head. “Sir Thomas! Sir Thomas! Tame your righteous fury. We’ll have a dispute of religion some other time, and now we have a matter to settle!”

To the knight’s shock and indignation, Oleg stripped off quickly: took off the rags of his cloak, with burs and burdocks and frog spawn and green moss from the monsters’ backs stuck to them, then his pants, even his worn-out boots, which the nasty strongman had called basts.

Confused, Thomas twiddled his sword in hand, his cheeks high-colored by bitter shame. He could not bear to see his friend humiliated, so he resolved to ignore his insistent request not to intrude. Come what may. If we die, we die together. Not life matters but honor. But, suddenly, the strongman got off his beast-like horse, threw his helmet down on the road, undid and hurled down his heavy belt, gripped the hem of the mail coat that reached his knees, pulled it over head with effort, the entwined steel plates ringing.

The horse under Thomas danced nervously. The knight’s jaw dropped as low as the sixth rivet on his armor. The strongman had stripped off all his armor, even his red high boots with silver tips on their turned-up toes!

In silence, with not a glance at each other, Oleg and the strongman got into each other’s clothes. Thomas’s eyes popped out again: the strongman’s mail was a real fit on the wonderer, if not a bit tight in shoulders. High boots and helmet were just the right size. Oleg twirled the giant mace like a splinter of wood, hung it easily by strap on the saddle hook.

The strongman struggled into rags with open disgust, sighed. “How many versts from hence to Tsargrad?” he asked in a different voice.

“Fifty and over,” Oleg replied and jumped on the black stallion. The horse moved his fiery eye, bared his teeth, laid its ears back in a predatory way. Oleg clapped on his broad forehead. “Hey, wolfish food, won’t you fell on the way?” he said comfortingly, then turned to the strongman. “Hail to you, hero. I believe you will overthrow the Idol… but is it what you should be doing? Is that the Idol you must overthrow?”

“Thank you for your kind words,” the hero muttered. “I can’t fathom you, for the life of me! It was on your way! And I’m to do fifty versts and over, and ‘over’ can make a hundred…” He wheeled round and, wasting no more words, started his quick walk by the road to Constantinople. Thomas followed him with puzzled eyes.

Long after, the knight drove his horse up to Oleg who was waiting impatiently. Armored, he looked so strange for Thomas’s eyes. “Sir wonderer, I feel a great secret here!”

“Great? There’s no secret at all, Sir Thomas.” As Oleg rode side by side with Thomas, he towered over the knight all but for a head. Thomas’s stallion looked a foal near the giant black beast snorting in fury, looking at his neighbor asquint with bloodshot eye, about to bite him.

“He said you are twice as strong…”

“He is Ilya Muromets,[18] a great hero of the Russian land. Great not in strength, though his might has no equals even among heroes, but great in his sacrifice. He has no wife, no lover, no children, no parents — only Rus’! Since he came to Kiev, as a mature man already, he defends and protects only Rus’… as well as he can, surely. Rus’ is his love, his passion, his life.”

“Hmmm… Is Kiev the Wild Field of yours?”

“Why do you think so?”

“He has a face of a man who slept in the open air for many years, with his saddle as his pillow. Not the one used to sitting and talking at the festive table.”

“You are right, Sir Thomas. Don’t be angry with Ilya. He spends his life on a frontier post, as befits a hero. Rus’ is big, though you still have trouble finding it between the vast kingdoms of Poland and Bohemia. Muromets catches enemies and offenders on their way. He’s burnt by summer sun, stung by winter frosts, lashed by autumn rains. Everyone who crosses the border unbidden is a foe to him!”

Thomas bowed his head slowly, as though accepting the apologies for the rude man who simply could not behave in a different way. “I see… But all the same, I’d not endure such insults if I were you!”

Oleg, still strange and unusual to Thomas in his armor, waved aside with great negligence. “I don’t take insults, as I’ve told you. I felt ashamed to hide behind his back. I’m not twice that strong, though he thinks I am… Could I spend my life reading wise books in the silence of caves if no him enduring frost, heat, and attacks of fierce enemies?”

Thomas glanced back at the road. “Do you think he’ll pass for a wonderer?” he doubted. “Too burly. And less humble than nothing.”

“He only needs to get into the palace!” Oleg took the mace off the saddle hook, twirled it, flung up into the air deftly, not slowing the horse’s pace. The mace flew back with din and terrible roar, its strap clapped loudly in the wind. Thomas alerted and hunched up, trying to do it without being noticed. This barbarian play is too dangerous. He glanced at Oleg slantwise, with fright. The wonderer rode on, looking straight ahead. At some moment, his hand jerked forward — and the mace smacked right into his palm. He tossed it up easily, caught by handle, and hung on the saddle hook again. His stallion stepped evenly, glanced a bit asquint on his rider absorbed in brooding.

“Have you changed with Muromets to help him… or you feel a trouble ahead?” Thomas asked suddenly.

“Both,” Oleg replied sadly. “Both of it, Sir Thomas.” Without a stop, he trotted past the houses plastered to the foot of the hill. They could see no livestock there save goats and hens indeed.

Thomas nodded at the hamlet. “Will we turn here?”

Oleg clapped absent-mindedly on his stallion’s neck. “No, I’d rather go by shanks’ pony… by this one.”

Chapter 27

As the road was going north, well-groomed fields were replaced by neglected, abandoned ones. Tall stone towers were seen more and more often: lit by blazing torches at night and bright reflected sunlight at daytime, as their guards exchanged signals with the help of mirrors.

Soon they saw a plundered village and, beyond it, the blackened ruins of the city that the wonderer had called Zolochev. The city wall was destroyed in two places, tall stone houses gaped with black holes of windows. Instead of roofs, they had white fresh-squared beams. Joined with cross-beams, they resembled picked skeletons of those monsters Thomas would hardly be able to forget until his death hour. Men bustled about. They whipped the survived horses, dragged logs and bricks, in some ant-like hurry to build their hill again.

“They also at war,” Oleg said sadly. “Forays, mutinies… Well, we ride farther to Saltov and part there. I’ll turn northeast, and you? Will you go back by the same road you took for Jerusalem?”

“I don’t remember it,” Thomas confessed. “Would noble knights who went to free the Holy Sepulcher bother with maps? We asked peasants and passers-by, and they pointed in the side where Jerusalem lies. That was how we went.”

“Oh, I see! You went with no calculations, not for plunder, but at the call of your heart. That’s why you made such a mess of things!”

“Which things?”

“Er… bones. In two days, after we pass Saltov, I shall turn onto the road across Steppes. And now the only way is straight.”

“Sir wonderer… It’s amazing but I’ve never had such a noble and worthy companion in my journey before! I have no brother, but when I come back to Britain, I’ll say I have!”

“Thanks,” Oleg replied awkwardly. He knew what it cost a noble knight to make such a confession to a common man. “Thank you, Sir Thomas.”

The nights were warm and so starry that the travelers had no need to make fire. However, twice they did it to dry their clothes after they got caught in a short bitter shower.

In one day’s ride before Saltov, they stopped for night in a beautiful cypress grove. Their horses stayed with them. The place looked like a wonderful garden, with well-groomed apple, pear, peach, and pomegranate trees in the middle of it. Oleg pointed at a heap of colossal stones and explained that some dozen years before there used to be a luxurious summer palace of a high lord, with a rich orchard and flower garden. Once there had been music and songs and children playing, but one could hardly survive that bloody time if he stayed far from thick city walls and their brutal garrisons.

Thomas insisted on his standing the night watch, as he was a man of battle and soldier’s duty, while sir wonderer was a private man and priest: though a great hero, but all the same a member of the respectable estate that needs protection. So he should sleep by the fire, while Thomas, a hero who stormed the Tower of David, would guard and feast his eyes on stars. Each the size a fist, unlike the stars in his homeland: no larger than snowflakes frozen on the pale northern sky!

Oleg went to sleep, laughing silently. The hardest time to stay awake is before dawn, and he was going to change the selfless knight then. And now let him watch the southern sky. He will hardly get out of his northern Land of White Wolves again soon… Or his Tin Isles… Britain… Saxon Anglia…

As Thomas sat by the fire, he sometimes tossed dry branches in it. With love and care, he moved the whetstone by the steel edge of the sword he had on his knees, fingered it from the sharp point to the cross-shaped handle. Fitted into the base of the hilt by the skilled armorer (who had also fixed Thomas’s breastplate and shoed his horse), there was the nail: red with Savior’s blood, its head flattened. The nail was crooked but wonder-working: every time Thomas thought of it, he felt a tremble in his body, then a burst of energy.

Slowly, he struck the rough stone along the sharp edge. His long sword could cut the iron handle of a mace or cleave a steel helmet, but the curved Saracen sabers he had encountered on the East could cut a pillow in two halves! A good Saracen saber was obliged to slash a light veil and a woman’s thinnest hair. To his shame, Thomas felt more and more love for the elegant Saracen weapons. His English sword seemed rough as a hammer in comparison with those.

He moved the whetstone carefully, brought the blade closer to fire to take a good look at it. There was a rustle. In a flash, Thomas recoiled from the fire, gripped the sword hilt, but his eyes were blinded by the blazing fire, bright sparkles floated before them in the dark. Tardily, he recalled the wonderer had never sat his vigil face to fire.

Someone struck his head, like an anvil, from behind. Hot fires blazed up in his eyes. Thomas rose, brandished his sword, but a heavy creature jumped on his back, struck again, and Thomas lapsed into the dark.

Through the pounding of blood in his ears, he heard voices. The dark sky dome with big stars was the same, the fire had burnt down a bit, crackling with coals. Dark figures emerged and vanished in the red semi-dark, iron clanged, shrubs snapped. He could see no horses but heard them snorting.

A gloomy face emerged from the dark to hang over Thomas, a broad face with prominent cheekbones. The man’s eyes, gleaming with excitement, examined his captive quickly. His lips moved apart, baring yellow dented teeth. “This safe… The other cost three ours, but we made it… D’you think we were paid fair?”

He was answered by a strange guttural voice from the dark. “First I thought we were overpaid! But now I’m not sure.”

“But we got them!”

“Sleepy. What if they woke on time?”

The man stepped away from Thomas. “It’s done, anyway. But you’re right: we could demand more. Though they warned us… I’ve never seen such men before!”

Thomas stirred, checking the ropes. A sharp pain flared up in the back of his head, hammers went knocking in his temples. His hands were tied up with a thick rope tightly, neither could he move his feet. He heard a groan nearby, turned his head. A wish to die of shame filled him: the wonderer lay in three steps, naked to the waist, his blooded face pressed against the ground, his hands tied up on his back with several coils of a thick rope, as well as his feet. In the reddish firelight, his muscle seemed carved of dark wood.

A squat man emerged from darkness, his face oddly flat and yellow. He limped, his strong hands dangled on a level with knees. In his crooked fingers, which looked like roots of an old tree, he had clanging chains and iron bangles. With no word, only a crunch of joints, he sank beside Thomas, put the iron on his ankles and wrists, started riveting it. Thomas swore: that fool, blind in the dark, missed straight off and hammered his ankle. His leg was completely numb, swollen with the rope, but the dull ache in the bone echoed over his whole body.

The wonderer moaned, turned on his side. Thomas saw his face and closed his eyes tight at once, though he knew he’d see it branded on the inner side of his eyelids: the maimed, blooded face of his friend whom Thomas’s mistake betrayed into the hands of foes!

“Kite, send for master!” a husky voice said in the dark. “He pays rest, and we ride away. I don’t like it here.”

A hoarse laughter and malicious voice came from another side. “Stelmah has already run for him!.. He’s in a hurry. For good news, he’ll get two extra gold coins.”

“Damn him… We have no choice. Two of ours killed by that beast, though already tied up, one strangled by iron devil… A bit more — and they’d have killed all of us!”

I strangled him, Thomas grasped. But when? As far as he recalled, the dark came at once. In his fall, he must have reached the enemy, pressed him down, and squeezed. Strangely, he still had armor on, while the wonderer was stripped off it. He’s had the armor of Muromets on for barely an hour. He’s just not fated to wear armor!

In the silent night, the trample of hooves rang out, approaching. Someone came rushing at full tilt. His horse neighed in fright when its bit was seized suddenly from the dark.

A complaisant hand tossed some dry twigs into the fire. It crackled, lit the small glade up. Thomas heard steps, then a hoarse voice constrained with rage and burning passion. “They!.. At last!”

A knight in light armor stood over Thomas, his legs wide apart. He was clad in mail, leather pants, and light boots, only his helmet was a heavy, knightly one: it covered all of his face, with only a narrow slit for eyes and tiny holes drilled in the metal on a level with mouth.

Thomas shuddered. Cold came into his limbs, filled them with lead. He peered into the narrow slit in fear, trying to see the eyes.

The other knight bent forward, shook his head. His voice was hoarse, scary. “You know me, Sir Thomas?”

“Sir Gorvel?” Thomas whispered. His voice broke, a tight lump blocked his throat.

The knight took his helmet with both hands, lifted it slowly. Thomas gave a cry and bit his lip, as he saw that corpse face: maimed and yellow, ugly scars coming down over each another. Thomas could see red gums and a row of teeth through the narrow hole in Gorvel’s left cheek. A white dry bone protruded from his trimmed right cheek. As though on a skeleton after crows had their feast upon it. His right socket, empty and crimson like the pharynx of the Hell’s stove, did not outstand much anymore on his fully disfigured face.

With effort, Gorvel stretched his lips, as white as worms, in a malevolent smile. “You know… And I see, you grasped what awaits you this time… before I cut off your head and fling it into a pot of boiling water!”

“Why?” Thomas whispered in a choking voice.

Gorvel put his helmet on slowly, in jerks, as though his sinews were damaged. His voice was muffled, but still full of towering malice. “To separate meat. I’ll make a spittoon of your skull!”

“Once you were civilized…” Thomas whispered. “Sir Gorvel, don’t flatter yourself. It was no fear that make me shudder. It was pity!”

With no word, Gorvel kicked Thomas’s face with his boot. Thomas spat out a clot of blood, which hung by the soft top of foe’s boot. Gorvel kicked him again, targeting his smashed lips, but hit on the cheekbone. Blood went running down in an oblique trickle.

“To barn,” Gorvel commanded. His voice was as shaky as epileptic’s. “There’s a good one made of logs, beyond the orchard. I’ll be back in a couple of hours and kill them. But first I want to make sure the cup in his bag is that one!”

The flat-faced man who was called Kite objected with heat, “To barn? It’s beyond us to keep them there for two hours, even tied up. The two of them will smash every barn, should it be from the biggest stones, not to mention logs. It’s not what we agreed on! They need to be watched even if tied, even if chained! Watched each by ten men. And even then…”

Gorvel wheeled round abruptly, his only eye blazed fiercely through the narrow slit. For a minute they watched each other without taking their eyes off, then Gorvel said, “You are right, rascal! I forgot how they escaped last time, how many men killed… Get them on horses, take to the waterfall. We’ll behead them there and hurl their bodies to fish. And now I shall take the cup to the master.”

Two men yanked Thomas up roughly, took the rope off his feet and looped it around his neck before making him sit ahorse. The other end of the rope was looped around Oleg’s neck: the wonderer was put on another horse. If Thomas fell down, the horse would drag him and strangle quickly, and Oleg would also be dragged off and strangled. Thomas grew cold. “Don’t you see the cup is the same?” he asked hastily.

Gorvel jerked his head. His voice was spiteful. “Do you think I looked into the bag last time? I’m not superstitious, but progressists avoid unnecessary risk. Let others check whether it can do any harm or not.”

Kite and another hireling helped Gorvel up into the saddle. Fiercely, Gorvel raised the horse to its hind legs, as though taking a revenge for his visible weakness caused by severe injury, yelled, and both vanished in the dark, with only an abrupt clatter of hooves.

“Peter, Paul,” Kite called harshly, “let’s go! Keep an eye on them. I don’t trust them even with loops on their necks.”

The two hirelings named by Kite got their horses going. The small caravan dragged itself through the night slowly. Kite would ride ahead to see the way, come back hastily, check the ropes on the hands of captives, touch the horsehair loops on their necks.

They turned left off the road and rode for a long time. Finally, Kite reined up. Thomas saw a predatory glitter of his eyes in the moonlight. “There! Look at the wide world, you knight!”

“Is it white?” Thomas asked arrogantly. “You must be blind, fool. It’s the black of night.”

Kite’s smile went broader. “I love brave men.”

They stood near the dark wall of the forest. A dull roar of waterfall was heard aside, a blow of cold coming from there. In the silvery moonlight, there was a vague outline of the rocky steep with a cloud of water spray over it.

The captives were dragged off the horses. Oleg still looked stunned. Thomas took in the place with a desperate glance, noticed a luxuriant oak grove, of old oaks with spreading branches, a birch forest on the left, and a thick hazel grove on the other side of the glade. As Thomas’s eyes got accustomed to the moonlight, he discerned ripe hazel nuts. For some strange reason, that was the bitterest stitch at his heart. I’ll never crack nuts again and those villains, that human filth, will have more of the juicy kernels!

“Here’s the end of your life,” Kite explained. “A beautiful place. Even a waterfall, which is rare in this land!.. Pity you are no Pagan. Christians don’t mind such things, but Pagans like to die in beautiful places and beautiful poses. First we’ll cut off your heads, yours and you wild friend’s, then hurl them to fish. Should some piece be thrown ashore, it would be smaller than a little finger!”

“The master might see it in a different way,” another hireling, Paul, warned him.

Peter, the third one, burst with stupid laughter. Kite shook his head with regret. “They must have been a real plague… Were it you to scratch him?.. Well, never mind.” He shoved Thomas. The knight fell on his back and tied hands, numb fingers crunched painfully.

At once, Peter was over the knight, his saber bare, but his voice comforting. “We’d have finished you straight off, but the order is different. Don’t be afraid. We’ll kill you, but with no torture.”

Thomas sat up with effort. “I don’t blame you,” he said haughtily. “You are common villains. But no excuse for Sir Gorvel for mixing with you. He is a noble man, after all!”

Kite exchanged glances with his hirelings and laughed. “Noble man? We are innocent lambs before your Sir Gorvel! When he crosses a desert, snakes creep away in fear of his venom, vultures flee and jackals run: they have nothing to do where Gorvel comes! Did you see him different? Though I doubt whether he could be different… Well, knight, have your rest.”

Thomas leaned his back against a big boulder. “Thank you,” he replied arrogantly. “The Holy Virgin in her mercy created this stone beforehand, for me to sit with comfort.”

“Excellent! And you, foreign pilgrim, sit next to him,” Kite suggested merrily.

Oleg rested his back against a granite rock in three steps away. It was all prominent stones and juts. His head drooped helplessly on his chest, blood dripped slowly on his knees. As he heard Kite, he tossed his head, looked with lackluster eyes. “Thank you. I have more comfort here.”

“Which comfort?” Kite asked suspiciously.

“Don’t you see? I was up for two nights, and it keeps me awake now. If these are my last minutes, I’d like to see the world. Sir knight knows I am Pagan.”

Kite looked at Peter with inquiry. The hireling nodded. “He had no cross on!”

Kite waved his hand uncaringly. “No breath is enough before death… Well, stay where you like. Hey, Peter, Paul! Keep your eyes on them! Is it clear?”

“As clear as it can,” Peter grumbled. “We keep our hands on them.”

Both sat before Thomas, their swords on their knees. In times they glanced at Oleg who was all but behind them, but the barbarian looked completely exhausted, covered with blood, and the rope on his hands, which were behind him, would do to keep an elephant. Besides, Kite had recalled the three killed men and ordered to tie the barbarian’s feet up tighter.

Thomas sat, resting against the boulder, his back straightened up: he did not want them to think he’d lost heart before death. His eyes looked arrogantly over the heads of hirelings. “Kite, this iron bone is too calm,” Paul said nervously at last. “His even snuffs burn holes in my stomach! Let’s finish them off and throw into waterfall.”

“And the master?”

“Tell him truth. Or you think he won’t pay us then?”

“He’ll claim we allowed them to slip out. He seems to have been scared in no small way before.”

Paul squatted down before Thomas, waved the end of his saber before the eyes of the arrogant knight. “Stop grinning!”

“Stop trembling, you!” Kite told him harshly, with contempt. “He’s a noble knight. Blue blood! Has cold feet, but keeps his arrogance. It’s their noble way. You are a fool to take it at face value.”

Paul squirmed, glanced at Kite with suspicion. “Why to feign?”

“Dunno,” Kite replied with a venomous smile, “it’s the way of nobles. But if you quake with fear still, then watch them closely. And you, Peter!”

“I’m watching,” Peter assured gloomily. “I saw how this iron bone snatched Nitwit. Squeezed once, and no whole bone left! And his heart slid out through his throat…”

Kite and Paul exchanged nervous glances, then glared at Thomas.

Well done me, Thomas thought. Lost consciousness, but kept my knightly grip. Pity I can recall none of it.

Kite was sitting before him. Black eyes glittered on his flat face, as they reflected the cold stars. He kept his saber in hand. In times, he would touch the sharp point with the nail of his thumb, as Thomas had done not so long before.

Shame drove hot blood to the knight’s face again. He uttered a muffled groan, made himself toss his head arrogantly and look over the heads of contemptible hirelings. The wonderer sat in three or four steps behind Kite and Paul, his face miserable, in dark stripes of dry blood. He moved his shoulders a bit closer, raised himself with effort, started to squirm nervously, as though scratching his back against the rock. Thomas watched him with perplexity: the wonderer seemed no coward, he’d proved his boldness more than once, but he was evidently nervous now, wriggling with fear — no warrior, after all, just a very strong man who had a good luck…

Suddenly Thomas felt a new wave of hot blood rush up to his cheeks. He winked with shame, all but cried. Shame on the noble knight who thought of the courageous pilgrim in the way he did! Oleg must have chosen that bad place just because he resolved at once to try to fray through the rope on his hands!

“You are all cowards,” Thomas spoke as mysteriously as he could. “I still have a chance to destroy you.”

Kite’s fingers took a firmer grip on the saber hilt. Peter and Paul rushed to feel the rope on his feet at once, and the collision of their heads lit the night with sparks. “Which chance?” Kite demanded.

“You will know,” Thomas told him slowly, keeping eyes on him, then looked at his tied feet. The three hirelings stared there too.

Paul went pale. Peter recoiled. Kite gritted his teeth, slapped Thomas on his face with all his might. “Now?.. You may scare these fools, but I’m a different sort!”

“Are you?” Thomas doubted. His smashed lips bled, but he got their eyes fixed on him. None of the three could see the desperate efforts of the wonderer. Oleg looked sullen and dulled, his face mostly hid in the shade, but something about him made Thomas hope.

The wonderer squirmed up and down, as though taking very deep breath. Thomas stiffened, bit his lip in fear and felt the salty taste of blood: a dark stripe came out from behind the wonderer’s back and went down slowly. It was a bit darker than the rocks and dry ground. Thomas could see it only because he was peering intently.

Thomas’s heart ached with fear and pity: the wonderer had cut his hands severely against the stone ledge, trying to fray the rope through. The pool of blood was growing, spreading around, as though he had cut large blood vessels!

For a moment, Thomas thought the wonderer decided to take his own life, not to let the despicable killers take it. But he was no noble man — a Pagan barbarian, and that sort would struggle for life till their last sigh, the last drop of blood and even longer. When Devil drags their souls to Hell, they must be biting him as fiercely as they can…

“I know what I say,” Thomas told them significantly. He raised his voice, to prevent them from taking eyes off him. “Do you think I learnt nothing? On all the long way from my northern land over two seas to the torrid Jerusalem? When I took the Tower of David from infidels by storm? When I climbed the tall walls of Jerusalem?.. And the sudden attacks of Saracen riders on their horses, as fast as the simoom of deserts! And their assassins! You are no more than blind kittens against them!”

In a loud voice, he began to tell stories of the triumphant campaign of Christ’s host. The hirelings listened, their eyes fixed on him. Professional killers, they had thus never been outside their country, saw neither hotter nor colder lands, nor even the sea. Too busy to travel. Restless times give more work to killers than to farmers or carpenters.

Suddenly Paul, the most suspicious one of the three, stirred anxiously. “It seems to me he chatters on some purpose!” His voice gave a quaver.

Peter laughed with light heart. “Of course he does! It helps him not to think of what awaits him.”

“No. There’s something maturing in his dome…”

“Soon the dome breaks and you see all of it,” Peter comforted. “Come on, iron bone! Come on!”

Thomas opened his mouth, but there came a trample of horse hooves in the dark. Kite took his bow and arrows, Peter and Paul — their sabers, the three of them stretched their necks to look over Thomas’s head. At last, Kite said with relief, “The master’s horse!.. Well, knight, the time’s coming.”

A rider became visible against the starry sky, his head and shoulders a strange gleam in the moonlight, as if he were covered with hoarfrost. His horse snorted, as it heard other horses, gave a soft neigh. Kite rushed to meet Gorvel with servility, helped him to dismount. Then one more rider emerged, on a small shaggy horse. Thomas grasped it was Stelmah.

Gorvel hobbled quickly up to the place where Thomas sat in his ties, shot a brief glance, through the narrow slit, at the motionless wonderer who seemed unconscious, his head dropped on the blooded chest, and turned again to the gleaming knight at once. “All in place?.. I rushed like a genie! Got afraid that some filth will interfere and spoil all of it. That’s no knight but a devil himself!”

“We coped with devils too,” Kite assured.

Gorvel limped up, stopped before Thomas. His only eye glittered in the moonlight through the slit, like a piece of ice. Thomas could see clearly a red socket in place of another eye. It looks like the Hell’s stove where this man is doomed to be burning forever.

Thomas replied with a straight look that showed his unsullied knightly pride, arrogance, and noble haughtiness. Gorvel spoke slowly, his breath still fast after a mad gallop. “What would you say now, Sir Thomas?”

“That I shall ride on and you stay here,” Thomas replied in a voice of a noble-born speaking to a stableman.

Gorvel recoiled, his hand gripped the sword. He glanced back at Kite and his companions with suspicion.

Kite advanced his palms, protesting. “It’s all right! Knights are all thick-headed. He can be brought to reason only by spear in his heart. Or his brain splashed around by battleaxe.”

“Then we’ll bring him to reason!” Gorvel said in a dull voice. “Or splash around?”

He drew out his sword: not knightly, as Thomas spotted, but a short and light one, as his maimed hand was no longer able to hold his previous heavy sword. Unwinking, Thomas looked at the steel mask that hung over him. The pity he felt for the half-man disappeared. The look of his blue eyes that seemed dark in the moonlight was straight and clear as always.

Gorvel’s voice thrashed in the iron box of his helmet, like a scary bat seeking a way out, darting from one side to another, scratching the iron with sharp claws. “You are the hero of the storm of the Tower of David, you released the Holy Sepulcher!.. You know prayers. You have to. Though I never heard you saying any but the name of Our Lady or swearing with clerical words. But now I want to hear a true prayer of you!”

“A true prayer will plunge you deeper into the Hell,” Thomas replied. “Don’t you fear a retribution from God?”

“We will all burn in Hell,” Gorvel snapped. “Not only me.”

Thomas saw in the dark that the rope on the wonderer’s body suddenly got weak. It had been stretched so tightly that it burst with a terrible crash, a crack like the one made by a shepherd’s whip. Everyone should have turned there, rush to him with sabers. Thomas’s heart got bleeding, but all the five of them, including Stelmah (he had come closer), were peering intently in the knight’s furious face. Thomas realized they heard no noises but the roar of close waterfall and the heavy breath of Gorvel.

“I’ll say more,” Gorvel’s voice roared in the steel tower of his helmet. “You will live just as long as your prayer lasts! But pray loudly, for us to hear every word.”

Behind them, the wonderer lifted his hands slowly. The fragments of ropes were still on them, dark blood dripped on the ground. His face was twisted with pain, his eyes two dark holes.

“Do it!” Gorvel demanded fiercely. He pressed the sword hilt a bit, the blade cut the skin on Thomas’s throat. Thomas felt a hot thin trickle running down. Strangely, it brought him relief. The wonderer is not the only one bleeding.

“That’s a knight!” Kite said in vexation. “Proud. No prayer of him.”

“Why not? We’ll have it,” Gorvel assured. “But I suspect he, though swearing with the name of Holy Virgin at every step, knows no prayers at all.”

Paul made a wary move closer to them, his eyes fixed on the dark stripe of blood on the knight’s throat. “Getting to prayer now for him is the same as begging mercy,” he supposed. “These are Franks. They only pray to their god because he doesn’t exist really — no one ever saw him!”

Behind them, the wonderer stooped, his numb fingers undid the tight knots on his feet. Slowly, he got up, reeled on his stiffened legs.

Gorvel and Kite kept their eyes on the pallid knight’s throat. At last, Gorvel brought his sword away. His fingers took a stronger grip on the hilt, his voice from the iron cage sounded full of violent rage. “Then go to your stupid paradise, you miserable! And I’ll stay on earth. I swear I will steal Krizhina, the girl who you dreamed of even before the storm of the Tower of David. I shall be laughing at you, while I and she…”

“False comfort,” Thomas interrupted proudly. “She will never want even to wipe her feet on you.”

Gorvel raised the glittering blade of his sword overhead. He took a deep breath, engraving in his memory the sweet moment of the last blow that would break his foe’s head apart, like a rotten nut shell, splash his brain within dozens of steps around…

Chapter 28

The wonderer rushed to them with his arms outstretched, grabbed as many villains as he could, hit them against each other. Only Kite and Stelmah escaped him: the beastly intuition of Kite made him jump aside at the very last moment, and Stelmah was standing aside.

There were shrieks. Gorvel wheezed, as the bodies of Peter and Paul pressed him down. The wonderer rose from the top of the heap of bodies. At once, Kite jumped from behind, stabbed Oleg on his back, while Stelmah rolled into the shrubs, jumped up there, seized his bow with both hands.

A strong fist hit Kite’s face with a crunch, as though a heavy stone fell on a nest of eggs. Silently, Kite vanished in the night. Oleg seized Thomas by chained hands, shouldered him with effort. As Kite fell, a dagger slipped off his hand, Thomas caught it involuntarily in the air, then his belly hit against something solid, the grey ground went rushing before his eyes, sliding away swiftly. He grasped he lay on the shoulder of the wounded Oleg running into the night. Thomas heard a swish nearby, then a scary dull smack, and again, but got no meaning of it, dangling on the running wonderer’s shoulder, like a sack of sand, his chained arms and legs ringing.

There was a furious shout behind. The wonderer crashed into dark hazel shrubs, turned abruptly, ran down a crack, turned again. Twigs scratched Thomas’s face painfully, he heard yells, shrieks, snapping of branches behind. Soon that was joined by abrupt clatter of hooves. Gorvel’s voice came from the left, and Stelmah replied from the right. He was chasing ahorse: felt the way or had the best eyesight to find in the dark the way among trees and thick bushes.

The wonderer stopped. Through his heavy rattling breath, Thomas heard the shouts of pursuers, shrill and shrieking. Gorvel, evidently with his iron helmet off, bellowed, promised any sum of money, any treasures to the one who comes up with runaways and kills them. Frightened Stelmah screamed back they should have done it straight away, with none of that noble clowning that cost them three men with broken backs and then Kite with smashed skull…

“Leave me, sir wonderer,” Thomas said hoarsely.

The wonderer ran again, jumping over logs, slipping on smooth stones covered with night dew, climbing over rocky heaps. Thomas on his shoulder heard Stelmah crying they were just about to come upon, as the knight’s hands and feet were fettered by indestructible iron and his foolish servant shed the ground with blood as he ran, with not only a wound of Kite’s dagger on his back but also two arrows in it.

Thomas turned his head in terror. Before his very eyes, in the moonlight, some light feathers bristled angrily at the wind. Feathers of two arrows in Oleg’s back! Thomas heard the wonderer’s breath bursting out with heavy screaming, moaned helplessly. A giant! No, a titan. Even a giant would have fallen already.

“Leave me,” Thomas whispered angrily, “or we’ll die both! Heal you wounds, then return and kill them!”

The wonderer’s breath burst from his chest, roaring like a forest fire. Being jerked up with each his convulsive sigh, Thomas cursed own weight, in a fervent desire to become as small and light as the warrior monks of that southern monastery.

The wonderer broke into some new shrubs, darted across a moonlit open space, turned, rushed again, like an elk, across a big glade, trampling on white caps of mushrooms. Suddenly it got pitch-dark around: the thick tree branches screened off the starry sky and the shiny disk of the moon.

The wonderer reeled, fell down to his knees. Thomas slipped off his shoulder, fell on the stones. The trample was dying away. Next to him, the wonderer breathed in scary rattles. A narrow moon ray fell on his raised dead face. His lips were blue, his palms leaned against the rocky wall. Two thick arrows stuck out almost in the middle of his back, under shoulder blades. The wonderer’s rattling was going quieter, his head coming down in jerks.

In two steps, there was a tinkle of water. Thomas got up to his knees, crawled there, scooped the water with fettered hands — the thick bangles and the chain prevented cupping them — and brought it to Oleg, half of it spilled on his short and hard way. The wonderer had slipped off the boulder, fell down prone. Thomas spilled the last drops on the wonderer’s neck, gritted his teeth in silent despair: his friend was dying before his very eyes!

With effort, he broke the arrows, leaving their ends stuck in the back, turned the wonderer on his side. Oleg rattled, his eyes rolled up, his face cramped, then his chest stiffened and raised scarily. Sinews in his thick neck bulged in a frightful way, about to tear. His body flinched, then started to relax.

Weeping and not ashamed of tears, Thomas jumped to the stream on his fettered feet, brought a handful of water, wrenched his palms. The drops fell into Oleg’s open mouth. His pale lips twitched, jaws came together slowly, with a creepy grind of teeth. Then his Adam’s apple jerked up, with great effort, as if the wonderer bit off and swallowed a piece of hard air.

Shedding tears, Thomas brought water once more, poured it into Oleg’s mouth. The water all but hissed as it fell into his hot throat, a small cloud of steam flew up. The wonderer gulped down, his overstretched sinews, almost at a point of breaking, started to sink slowly, to subside under his dead skin. His face, distorted by a cramp, remained scary. His lips moved, Thomas heard a croak. “Where… they?”

“Alive,” Thomas whispered, hearing the songs of Heaven’s angels. “Hold on, don’t die… I saw men who didn’t die of an arrow. Even of two…” He said nothing about the wound of dagger: blood still trickling out of it, while falling in rare heavy drops from under the arrows.

“Alive still…” the wonderer croaked a bit quieter. “Off chance we keep…”

“Off chance, off chance,” Thomas agreed hastily. “I’ll crawl away, and you hide. If they find me, keep silent. Probably even Pagan gods will do to save your life. I adjure you: if you survive, take the Holy Grail to my England. But not old England, the one on the continent — to the new one on isles!”

“The Land of White Wolves…”

“Britain,” Thomas corrected. “There you’ll become a honorable… Probably, you’ll even get a noble rank. Though not knight’s…”

There were shouts far away. Judging by the voices, the grove was combed by a long human chain. Thomas shook his fettered hands angrily, tugged the iron off his feet The wide bangles dug into bare flesh, the scratches went bleeding. “We’re caught!” he hissed in despair. “Now they don’t bustle about like angry dogs who lost hare’s tracks!”

The wonderer got up to his knees with a moan, his face twisted with pain. The tendons in his neck bulged, threatening to break the skin.

“You way is down the stream,” Thomas said hastily. “A steep wall there, but with a pass made by waterfall! They won’t hear you in its roar.”

He sounded hopeless: the wonderer was dying, and getting down a steep wall was a difficult thing indeed, even for a strong, healthy highlander… at daytime, not in the moonlight when one can’t see own hands. And then he would have to force the roaring torrent of icy water that jumps, like an animal, over rocks, carries dead trunks, dead animals, drags huge boulders!

The wonderer struggled up to his feet, lurched. His voice was broken with pain. “Yes… Here they can find us…”

He stepped past Thomas. A huge hand, which seemed to come down from the starry sky, seized the knight roughly by belt. Flying up into the air, he cried, his body hit against a hard surface, which gave a swing. The stones in the wall went floating past Thomas. Finally, he realized lying not on rock but on the wonderer’s shoulder. “Mad man,” Thomas cried in a whisper, “you won’t climb down!”

Oleg’s breath went faster, more backbreaking. Thomas tried to relax, lest he bounce that high on the hard hot shoulder. The wonderer kept picking up speed, in a hurry to leave the moonlit space behind.

The roar of the waterfall grew louder, more menacing. On the edge of the rocky steep, the wonderer dropped to his knees, Thomas slipped silently on the ground. His head banged against a stone, he gritted his teeth, lacking his steel helmet. The incessant roar and thunder, a blow of cold and cloaking water spray were coming from below.

The wonderer crawled over the edge, hung on his hands, raised a bit as he found a foothold, reached for Thomas. The knight tried to move away but the strong hand shouldered him, and Thomas froze, like a worm in cocoon, in fear that a careless move would push both himself and Oleg off into the abyss.

The moon came out from behind a tiny cloud, the night grew lighter. Thomas shot a glance down and all but wrenched out with fear. The wonderer climbs down a steep wall, like a fly, finding by miracle the smallest ledges and cracks to set feet and hands. Thomas hangs, looking into the abyss, at the height of a ten-floored palace. Far below, a mighty water stream rushes among sharp stones, spits foam, drags huge boulders with a thunder, their smooth gleaming backs stick out, polished by the water. If he falls, he’ll crumble to pieces with fear before he gets down!

The wonderer’s breath was backbreaking, blood streamed down his back. Evidently, he was holding with his last strength, his fingers about to weaken, to come off the even rocky wall, and the two of them to start a long fall, as long as their lives!

Carefully, Thomas tried to slip off Oleg’s shoulder: he resolved to fall alone and let his brave friend survive. If the Virgin lets it too. He got afraid, but the more terror crept into his soul, the more diligence he put into his moves off the steep shoulder, seeking a way to slip down that would spare the wonderer.

Suddenly he felt the wonderer’s arm, up to the shoulder, passing under his chain. Now we’ll fall both! So Thomas, gnawing his teeth and cursing the selflessness of the northern barbarian of Scythia, tried to move his body closer to his neck to distribute the weight among both shoulders. “Angels damn you,” he hissed, like an angry snake, in Oleg’s ear, “and your nobility! We knights can die with no cry…”

The wonderer started to groan hoarsely through gritted teeth. Thomas closed his eyes tight, feeling with each his vein the creepy teeth of protruding rocks on the bottom of the gorge. He resolved not to open eyes. If we fall, we fall. He’d died of terror hundred times, what could be more?

A knock on his back, and he was pressed on the hard. The waterfall roared in his ears, that sound all but drowned the thundering breath of Oleg, the rattling and screaming in his chest. A dense water spray came all over them. Thomas opened his eyes hastily. In the moonlight, he saw the wonderer’s face distorted with pain, his lips bloodless, his nose sharp. They lingered on a tiny stone ledge, in just fifteen or twenty feet over the water. The waves lapped and thundered against the rocks, the air was filled with water mist. The wonderer staggered at the very brink, his eyes screwed up bus his arm stretched out over the edge, lest Thomas fall into the seething stream.

Suddenly Oleg’s eyes started to close. He sobbed, dropped to his knees, then fell on the side. Hastily, Thomas snatched the hem of the wolfskin with his fettered hands, kept Oleg on the stone ledge. The wonderer turned with a moan. With his eyes closed, he groped and slapped around. Thomas froze when the wonderer tore a dark wisp of grass out of a crack and put into his mouth. He hurried to seize Oleg’s hand, but the wonderer was already chewing with effort, then swallowing. Thomas saw Adam’s apple struggling up his throat.

Suddenly a furious shout rang out far above. Some noisy thing flew past them, hit the stones below. Thomas tossed his head but could only see the overhanging rocky cover.

The wonderer was crawling at his feet, grabbing something with both hands and filling his pocket, his jaws moving constantly, his eyes goggled as a mad man’s, his lips dripping with saliva. “Sir wonderer…” Thomas called. His voice gave a quaver.

Oleg shook his head, as he kept slapping on the rocky wall, searching the dark cracks. Finally, Thomas saw what the wonderer was snatching: the grass that grew in slits among stones. Hairy, loathsome, and disgusting like the back of a drowned rat.

Heavy rocks rushed down past them, the columns of splashes reached their ledge. Oleg got up, clinging at the wall, clasped Thomas silently around the middle of his body, squat to shoulder him.

Thomas screamed in terror. “Sir wonderer! If you have any strength left… save yourself! Off chance, as you put it, a miracle happens and you will survive. And I’m to be saved by no one.”

Oleg walked on the ledge, scratching the rock with Thomas, until the ledge got so narrow that the wonderer clung to the stone surface again and crawled down, clutching at the smallest unevenness. Thomas had died hundred times before, but when the splashes reached his legs he stiffened, tried instinctively to tuck his feet up, but made himself relax again, hang like a sack of sand, as the wonderer groaned of his squirms. Shamed, Thomas bit his lip until it bled: he felt the wonderer’s back sticky and soaked, but not with the waterfall splashes!

Suddenly Oleg slipped off a stone. Thomas’s blood ran cold. The roaring water stream poured them over, wisps of foam got stuck in the wonderer’s red hair.

For some long, agonizing moments Thomas waited for death to come, but the water rushed by. At last, he saw the wonderer was stuck between two boulders. He didn’t fell but jumped down at will. The water was knee-deep, but splashes and foam flew overhead. Thomas moaned, craving for a beautiful death again. He forgot he was not galloping into knightly attack on his warhorse and a beautiful death could hardly be achieved by the one tied up, hand and foot.

Holding the knight as a log on his shoulder, Oleg struggled on a smooth stone, measured the distance by eye, jumped. Thomas opened his eyes wide involuntarily, as he saw foaming streams among the rocks that protruded from water across the mountain river. The roar made his ears crack, the icy foam stuck up his eyes and mouth like glue… And the wonderer, with his fatal wound, leapt heavily from one wet rock to another, slipped on those wet giant eggs, but some miracle kept him from falling off, he leapt again, his rattling more terrible with every jump, his fingers getting weaker. Thomas saw a gap between rapids where the wonderer, utterly exhausted, would probably drop his unbearable load and fall down, his life burnt to ashes during those terrible hours!

Oleg collapsed heavily, face first, on the bank. Thomas rolled down from his back, glanced around in bewilderment. They’d left the scary water stream behind!

Thomas touched Oleg’s shoulder, the wonderer did not move. Thomas’s heart sank, he turned his friend’s head, removed the dirt and river rubbish from his face to prevent choking. The wonderer’s eyes were open but his stare stony dead.

“Forgive me, friend,” Thomas said heavily. He sobbed with burning shame of his being alive and chained, while the wonderer died to save him.

Suddenly Oleg’s eyelashes flickered, his face gave a twitch. The wonderer took a deep breath, fingers of his right hand clenched convulsively. Thomas jumped up, his chains rang. “Sir wonderer!” he cried. “Sir Oleg! Tell me: what to do? Never mind the cup. I’ll go to your Scytho-Rus’, just tell what to say of you! I’ll give the rest of our money to your family, don’t worry!”

“Pocket…” Oleg croaked.

“What?” Thomas didn’t get it.

“In… po… cket…”

Hastily, Thomas put his fingers into the wonderer’s pocket, then into another. It was difficult with fettered hands. The familiar disgusting grass stuck to his fingers.

“Give…”

Thomas obeyed, though with a shudder: put several nasty grass blades into the wonderer’s stiffening mouth. They were so small and entwined that seemed no grass but some frozen fibers of whitish slime. Oleg tried to chew but could not move his jaws, tried to swallow but his throat emitted dry heat that burned Thomas’s fingers. The knight hurried to scoop some water. It was spilled at once, but several drops got into the wonderer’s mouth. He licked his lips slowly, made a forced swallowing move.

“Sir wonderer? Do you have a family?.. Please tell me! I’ll tell them of your… of you!”

“And your Britain?” Oleg whispered softly.

“I’ll get there later. From your Russo-Scythia!”

“And Krizhina?”

Thomas felt as though stabbed in heart. With the eyes of his mind, he saw valiant Roland who died while covering the retreat of the force of his sovereign, Charles the Great. Roland loved beautiful Alda, she waited for him. As a true knight, he preferred friendship to love: dying, he said farewell not to Alda but to Durendal, his spatha-sword… “I’ll go to your Rus’,” he said firmly. “Or Ross. Wherever you like. You are a Pagan… Please tell me how to bury you.”

“Da… damn…”

“What?” Thomas cried. “Oh, daemonic rite! With sacrifice and dancing? And singing, yeah? What songs would you like?”

Oleg did not move. Suddenly he seemed dead to Thomas. Through the roar of close waterfall, he could not hear Oleg’s heavy breath, and the moon had found, by some miracle, a cloud in the night sky and hid behind it. Thomas, frightened but hopeless, shook his friend, clapped on his cheeks.

Suddenly the wonderer turned to him slowly his pale face, which had turned gaunt at once, his eyes sunken. “How are the arrows?”

Thomas clenched his jaws, examined the wonderer’s back quickly. The dagger wound was not bleeding anymore but the blood did not dry either: Oleg was soaked with water splashes from head to feet, as well as Thomas. The second wound, on his side, was only bleeding a bit, as if all the blood had gone out before. Two tiny twigs stuck out under the shoulder blade. Thomas gave a dull groan as he grasped that he’d been touching them constantly while dangling, like a bag of stones, on the wonderer’s back. “If only we reach a healer!” he said with sudden hope. “Sir wonderer, we still have a chance…”

“Pull them out,” the wonderer said in a lifeless voice. He lay prone, his arms outstretched, as though he fell down from a great height. “The arrowheads are not deep in, I feel…”

“Sir wonderer!” Thomas cried in terror. “I can’t!”

“Then I’ll die,” the wonderer said plainly.

Thomas sobbed, gripped the broken fragment of arrow with his trembling fingers, but it, wet and soaked with blood, slipped out of his weakened hands at once. The muscle on the wonderer’s back, where the iron was stuck, gave a twitch. Thomas bit his lip, with an ardent desire to die straight off but the wonderer to become healthy instead.

“Pull slower,” Oleg croaked. “Do it very slow!.. Or the head slips off.”

Thomas joined his fettered hands, dug his nails into the wooden twig, started a long agonizing way above. Blood gushed out at once, ran down the back!

When the skin started to swell (which was a sign of the iron arrowhead approaching) Thomas stopped: the wooden twig was coming out too quick. It slipped out of iron! Holding the broken blooded twig to see the arrowhead bulging under skin, Thomas pressed his mouth to, tried to get the lump moving with his tooth, but the wonderer’s skin was too hard, tanned. Thomas closed his eyes desperately, not to see the blood, pressed the lump with teeth, holding it by the twig at the same time, started biting through that sturdy, unyielding skin.

Blood filled his mouth, he gulped it down. His head was giddy and dizzy, as if he were losing blood quickly himself. His teeth grinded against the iron, he pulled the twig with caution. A shapeless bloody lump came out of the wound: the iron arrowhead caked in clots of blood. He heard mountains collapse, horses neigh, and swords ring in his ears. Through all that noise, a distant voice came, “Now you are my brother by blood. Set to another…”

“You will bleed!”

“The water from glacier… Splash it over… To set…”

With the arrowhead clenched in his teeth, Thomas opened the second wound by cutting the live flesh, took the arrow out, then, at once, started to scoop the icy water and splash it on the blooded back. In the light of the breaking day, red streams ran back into the mountain river. They were growing lighter swiftly.

“E…nough!” the wonderer said with his teeth clanging. “My wounds shut… Of fear, it seems… and cold…”

Thomas could not bend his fingers, frozen like icicles. He could not feel his forearms, even his arms. The wonderer turned with great effort, sat up, resting hands against the ground. Yellow like a dead man, he became emaciated for that only night, the features of his face sharp. He looked again like the pilgrim whom Thomas had met beyond the walls of Jerusalem.

“We must go,” Oleg said in a constrained voice. “Thomas… you may jump like a bird or crawl like a snake, but we have to get away. There must be a bridge or a ferry somewhere. Soon they’ll cross.”

“I see no bridge,” Thomas muttered exhaustedly.

“This small river is no Dardanelles. And men even cross oceans!” He got up, leaning on the stones, then risked to take his hands off, stood for a while, staggering slightly. With fear and amazement, Thomas looked in his gloomy strained face. Oleg stopped swaying, turned his head. “Let’s go. They are coming. You can lean on me…”

Breaking himself, Thomas started to rise from the cold ground, thinking, with fear and perplexity, of the strange things in life. The forty wonderers turned out to be the heroes whose unheard-of might could shake kingdoms, and his wonderful companion and friend and also his sworn brother, as Thomas had tasted his blood… Who are they? What do they consider a true feat if they neglect their present deeds? They sing of knights who slew dragons, but these men killed the Hell’s monsters with all but bare hands — and forgot it at once, as if those were flies they drove away… And the wonderer does not see at all that each his step now is a feat!

He jumped after Oleg, his short chain rang, bangles made his ankles sore. The wonderer glanced back often, and Thomas saw with terror that his friend suffered more for him than for himself.

He felt a strange fury for the wonderer boil up in his soul. One good turn deserves another, and Thomas would never be able to pay back with a similar deed. Suffering for others is a thing of wild Paganism that fell under the victorious blows of Christ’s faith. True, Christ suffered for others Himself, but He was still a sinner at that time…

He felt a current of hot air, went jumping faster, fell down, rolled over, tried to proceed on his fours, but the bloody chain was too short: he would have to bend his back like a worm crawling along a stick… Thomas moaned through gritted teeth but did not slow down, as he saw the wonderer suffering more. He took my sin on his shoulders. Damned Pagan who behaves like the ascetic of Nazareth…

The wonderer stretched out his hand. “Lean,” he said in a dull voice. “Easier to jump.”

“What?” Thomas snapped with insult. “You lean!”

The wonderer still staggered but his feet did not miss anymore. His pace grew steady, and Thomas, to his shame and fear, fell the strength coming back to Oleg with every moment.

Chapter 29

When they got out of the piles of stones, there was a valley, green as the surface of an old bog. Trees stuck out of the carpeting grass in small close groups, very distinctive on the plain, as flat as a table. In places there also were curly bushes: thick, crowded, their branches very close, as though holding the line against the attacking hosts of grass and thistle.

Through pain and pounding in head, Thomas felt being supported, in times even dragged by strong hands. They hobbled up to the nearest shrubs and fell down into the shade: the sun was high. Thomas breathed frequently, his chest uttered rattling, screeching sounds, as though a knife scratching a pan.

“Be patient,” the wonderer told him in a husky voice. “When it darks, I’ll steal into a village. You hear dogs? It’s close. I’ll take a hammer, some pincers…”

Helplessly, Thomas felt his chains. Thick links were in blood — his blood. The iron bangles had chafed his legs up to flesh, almost up to bone, the sores oozed with blood and ichor constantly, the pain in times made all go dark before his eyes. “You won’t reach the village!”

“I will! Slavic children are taught to steel up to a wild goose, so that to pull a feather out of its bum. I’m no Christian, feel no shame in filching a hammer. Though I’d leave a coin instead… If I had any.”

“Are you strong enough?”

“Now I am,” the wonderer answered mysteriously.

“How did you gain strength?”

The wonderer did not reply: he was dead to the world. Helpless, Thomas sprawled on the grass in the shadow of a tree. Exhaustion fell upon him, like a warhorse in full armor. He lapsed into a doze.

His waking up was terrible: a rattle nearby, Thomas gripped the sword hilt, but his arm was flinched with pain, he heard a tinkle of chain… and there was no sword. He lay on his back, three tower-like men with coarse faces stood over him. They were clad in leathers, convenient for hunting, with bows over their shoulders, heavy knives on their belts. All the three had short spears in hands, the iron spearheads leaned on Thomas’s belly and under his ribs.

The wonderer lay bound tightly, the right side of his face covered with fresh blood. Thomas closed his eyes in helpless despair, groaned through gritted teeth. “Our Lady, what for?.. For the second time! So foolish…”

One of the hunters bared his crooked black teeth in a broad smirk. “Haven’t fought for long time, you villain?.. Get up!”

Nearby, the wonderer was jerked up by his tied hands and held up: he was sinking, his knees giving way, his head dropped on the breast. Thomas looked in the faces desperately: all strangers. “What do you want?”

The older hunter looked surprised. “We? Nothing. Take you to master, for him to decide. It’s clear you are runaway slaves… Or some outlaws broken out of prison?”

“We are not outlaws,” Thomas moaned.

“Why chained then, you? Defiler, yeah? I see it by your mug.”

Thomas gnashed his teeth, nodded at the wonderer. “And he? Let him go… He is not chained.”

“Why’d he hobnob with you?” the hunter asked sober-mindedly. “Either helped you or a sort of that… If not guilty, we let him go. Our master’s a beast, but a fair beast. He will let you go too if finds out you chained for nothing. But don’t be too hopeful: such chains are never put on for nothing!”

They were thrown across the saddles and bound tightly. The only man who escorted them drove horses fast. The rest had galloped away, shrieking, as they saw a deer. Thomas started to twitch fervently, trying to weaken the ropes at least, but the beautiful house of white stone was growing ahead too quickly: a light mansion, its roof supported by pillars of show-white marble, open to the light of southern sun.

A young boy ran out to meet them, flung open the gate that was easy to jump over for a pregnant hare. The master of the castle seemed to be carefree: either a fool or the very name of him kept villains away.

The well-groomed grass crept under hooves. The palace towered ahead, but the horses were led past stables to a gloomy bran formed by massive granite slabs. The gate squeaked open, captives were hurled into. The gate bars thundered outside: one, two, three, and a padlock was hung on with a thud. A stern voice commanded invisible guards to keep their eyes skinned: if they leave their guard even for a moment, both would be fed to dogs, just like the runaway wench who tried to escape the master’s bed the week before.

Thomas waited until his eyes got a bit used to the dark, then called quietly. “Sir wonderer… are you alive?”

He heard a feeble moan. “My head smashed…”

“It is the end of us,” Thomas said with a creepy feeling of doom. “It is! Not because we got captured but because it’s the second time I blundered on my watch. The second time they took us sleepy! Two times in a row! I beheaded sentinels who guarded our hosts from Saracen for such things.”

He heard a faint voice in the dispersing dark. “What watch, Sir Thomas?.. Don’t be foolish. We were both half-dead.”

Oleg tossed in his corner, groaned, squirmed, gnashed his teeth. A strip of bright light penetrated under the door. Thomas’s eyes accommodated, he could see protruding stones in the walls, dirty hay on the floor.

“Dark…” a hoarse voice came from the corner. “Or it’s my eyes?.. Sir Thomas, is it night?”

Thomas felt his back snowed. He moved his shoulder blades, as though a wet icicle slipped by the scruff of his neck. “Take heart, sir wonderer.”

“I see,” Oleg croaked, “I see now it’s dark… in me…”

Squirming, bending in torment, he scratched some whitish thing out of his pocket, with fingertips of his tied hands, bent his palms with effort in the opposite direction, brought to his mouth. Thomas felt a sharp smell, watched closely and gave a start: his friend’s lips were in yellow big-bubbled foam. “A rare moss…” the wonderer croaked. “Extinct all but everywhere, survived here. We in our woods call it overcome grass. I’ll die soon, Sir Thomas, but first I make you free.”

“How?!” Thomas exclaimed in disbelief.

“The overcome grass gives strength… Then one dies, like a fly in the frost.”

“Poison?”

“Each man has some strength in store… like a hamster in his burrow… Overcome grass is to release all of it at once. That’s why he dies — he has no strength to live anymore…”

He brought to his mouth the whitish fibers, the biggest of which looked like blind worms that live in deep caves where God’s light can’t reach. Thomas caught his hand, tore the disgusting fibers off his palm and threw into own mouth. Twisted with disgust, he started to chew, his palate and tongue got burnt at once, his mouth hot, as though he swallowed a red-hot horseshoe. His stomach twitched, started to climb hastily up his throat.

Thomas overcame sickness and swallowed. A ball of fire sank down his larynx, kicked down the stomach that was climbing from below, and both came down as a burning avalanche. He felt something in his belly ooh, toss, and jump. “We’ll die together!” he claimed firmly.

“Don’t be stupid…” the wonderer whispered with his heavy, swollen eyelids lowered. “What about Holy Grail?.. Krizhina?”

Thomas closed his eyes tight. He hated himself for all the trouble he had brought on his friend. “Isn’t it a disgrace to leave you to death?.. And more disgrace to save myself at your expense.”

“But Krizhina?”

“I don’t want her to be a wife of disgraceful man.”

“And Holy Grail?”

“He was searched by the Knights of the Round Table, as far back… They found it and lost again! Now I see it were the Secret Seven who hampered them too… But I believe that, though I now lose it, my good young Britain will have another brave knights who, eventually, shall bring the Holy Grail to its shores.”

The wonderer turned side to him silently. Thomas divided the rest of the moss, as disgusting as nothing on earth, in two equal parts. “Chew it. We shall die as men.”

Imperceptibly, his legs, sore with fetters, stopped aching. His bleeding wrists got covered with dry rustling scab. Thomas shifted his stunned eyes to the wonderer: he grasped that when Oleg had chewed that slick muck for the first time, over the waterfall, all the strength he gained was used to heal the terrible wounds faster. And now — Thomas blazed with shame and disgrace — he burnt down the rest, trying to help Thomas, his random companion. The faithful friend, a peaceful seeker of Truth would die first of him, a man of war? A brass head, as old men put it, though his forehead was covered by no brass but shining steel…

Thomas gnashed his teeth, depressed by the feeling of guilt. “When does that moss take effect?” he asked angrily.

“It’s ancient overcome grass…”

Through the wall of the barn, they heard heavy steps. The bars thundered, the door flew open with a heartrending screech. In the bright sunlight, a squat man in red shirt, with a crimson brand on his forehead and heavy eyebrows, appeared on the threshold. With his gimlet-like eyes, he inspected the tied-up captives quickly, lingered his look on the wonderer, whose face was covered with stabs of dry blood. “Who fed them?” he asked in a creepy voice that seemed to be coming from his belly.

Behind him, some men in leather jackets get moving anxiously. They sounded like frightened birds. “No one!.. We swear it!.. Never, none of us would!..”

“Why they slobber?”

“Gnawed at the walls with hunger! Moldy, mossy as they are…”

The branded man stepped in, stopped before Thomas, kicked him in face. Thomas’s head jerked with his blow. The branded man’s smile got broader, he kicked the captive again with his shoed boot, a brass flourish glitter dimly on the toe. “Get up, you carrion!” he roared terribly. “Live carrion, but how close to dead!.. Now you’ll be sorted out.” The hunters came after him, set their short spears, the heads of which looked more like knives, at Thomas and Oleg from three sides. The wonderer got up, walked out first, after he cast a warning glance at Thomas.

The green yard was flooded with bright sunlight but the air cool and fresh. A young ripe girl was carrying a wooden barrel across the yard, her body a beautiful curve. Water splashed over the brim, clear drops glittered like pearls. She cast a slantwise glance at the bashed, tied-up captives, one of them ringing with fetters, and smiled vacantly, showing her even white teeth.

Behind the barn gate, two more guards advanced their spears and that way, in a tight ring, captives were led across the yard into the palace that looked like a dream made of white lace. On the stairs, broad and sparkling in the sunlight, they were met by two armored warriors. One tripped the wonderer up silently and, as he stumbled, roared and whacked him on his back with the thick end of spear. Thomas, beside himself with fury — the wonderer had two wounds of arrows and one of dagger on his back! — jumped on the guard, gripped him by breast with tied hands, his strong fingers pinched his skin together with mail, lifted up into the air and hurled forcefully down to his feet.

He did not feel the blow, only a thunder in head, a flash of lighting, and he fell down, face first, but even as he lost consciousness, his lips curled in a smile.

“Sir Thomas,” a stern voice over him called insistently, “come to yourself, now! Or you’ll die.” Once Thomas heard that familiar voice, he plunged, with effort, out of the black oblivion. The back of his head was still aching of the blow landed by the axe butt. He felt salty taste in his mouth.

The smooth marble floor was a pleasant cold to his bashed body. He and the wonderer were in a great hall: tall marble pillars on three sides, instead of usual walls, supporting the massive vault. The mosaic ceiling pictured flying cupids, goat-like satyrs jumping in embrace with naiads, maenads, and other impious characters of Hellenic Paganism. Oleg’s anxious face hung over Thomas, covering the ceiling: his eyes in dark circles, his cheek blooded. Behind him, the sun was shining brightly, and the wonderer’s face seemed completely dark.

In three steps, a red-bearded man in rich clothes was sitting on a high carved chair that looked like a throne. The eyes on his puffy face were cold and cruel. Two stocky guards with battleaxes stood near him, goggling their eyes. Two other guards shifted their feet impatiently near Oleg, touched his ribs threateningly with iron spearheads. The jailer with branded forehead and three hunters stood near the pillars.

Thomas moved his hands, but the iron chains kept them firmly. The wonderer stood with his shoulders leaned back, trying to relieve the pain in his arms pinioned behind.

“If doesn’t come to,” a new voice said, imperious and impatient, “throw him to dogs!.. And you answer: why are you chained while he is not?”

Two guards grabbed Thomas by hands, dragged across the hall. When they approached the stairs, the sun came out of the edge of the ceiling, shone into his eyes. Thomas closed them, groped for the guards’ arms, caught them, and pulled on. Both men collapsed, shrieking. Thomas squeezed their necks with joy, got up to his feet heavily. The guards remained lying in odd poses, their heads wrenched in a strange way.

Two men with battleaxes recovered their wits, rushed to him. The sun glared on their raised axes.

“All stop!” the man on the carved throne shouted. The warriors stopped, their eyes watched every move of Thomas in a guarded way. He shot a glance at the wonderer: Oleg did not move and gave Thomas a sign to stand still too.

Thomas turned to the master. “Why do you keep us?”

The man descended from his throne, stopped in three steps before the knight. His dark eyes looked with perplexity: that way a wolf could look at a hare who dug his suddenly big teeth into his paw. “Who are you?”

“Thomas Malton of Gisland,” the knight cut short with dignity. “A noble knight, seven generations of noble ancestors! Championed over the Black Knight on the tourney in Manchester. The first crusader to rise on the Tower of David. Commander of the hundred who broke into Jerusalem.”

The man waved away, as though driving an importunate fly. “Never heard of that. The Tower of David — where’s it? Jerusalem — what’s it?.. Here are different lands, noble captive. I’m a man of Sezuan. I’m known as Rocambole the Quietest. I took you in my lands — and have a right to do what I wish to. And I will do it. But listen to your excuses first.”

“We are not going to give any excuses,” Thomas said angrily.

Rocambole turned his head a bit, cried over shoulder. “Gnusak! Prepare the torture chamber. Make a good fire. What’s burning now once made seven tents of Gypsies freeze to death… Check the pincers. What will you pull out teeth and other organs with?.. And don’t forget the boot!”

The branded man bowed, rushed across the yard. Rocambole turned to Thomas, his lips curved in a predatory smile, his eyes goggled like a rare sea fish’s. “You will tell all of it, noble knight! Not the first to be carried out of my cellar in pieces. Or fed to dogs while alive — I always keep them half-starving.”

Thomas scowled, his eyebrows collided on the bridge of the nose. “You are no Saracen but European! How can you…”

Rocambole roared with laughter. “Saracens have never even dreamed of what we do in our cellars! We are young nation, still wild! We can do everything.”

There were fast steps on the stairs. The branded man came in sight, cried out, panting, “All is ready, master! Executioners wait, the fire burns… Pinches and hooks sharpened!”

Rocambole bared his teeth in a predatory smile, nodded to guards. Thomas and Oleg were encircled by shining spears, two spearheads pierced Thomas’s back from behind. Rocambole nodded again, and captives were driven away from the hall.

They were coming downstairs into the yard, when a ringing clatter of hooves came from far ahead. Five riders, armed to the teeth, in iron helmets, on clothed horses, jumped over the low fence into the yard. The first of them was… Gorvel!

Some blooded cloths peeped from under his solid cylindrical helmet. His right shoulder was bound tightly by a white towel with large red-hot spots of blood on it. Gorvel was followed by four gloomy warriors, all big and armored. It took Thomas some time to recognize Paul and Stelmah among them.

Gorvel reined up before the stairs. “Aha!” he cried in a strained voice. “Got you at last! Slash these stinkers! Slash them now!”

The four warriors drove their horses in a slow pace to the marble stairs. Sabers in their hands glittered in the sunlight, casting bright sparkles.

Rocambole stepped ahead, on the topmost stair. “Who are you?” he bellowed in an angry, enraged voice. “Who allowed… in my lands?”

Gorvel shot a fierce glance at him and told angrily the dressed-up, like a peacock, master of the sumptuous palace to go to very far lands. Gorvel’s men laughed, sabers in their hands scattered fine sharp sparkles around.

Rocambole grew crimson, made a step back, waved his hand abruptly. Stelmah rode up to Thomas, raised the saber over his head with a malevolent smirk. Suddenly his fingers unclenched, the saber fell down and went bouncing on the white marble. Thomas looked up and recoiled: a crossbow bolt was in Stelmah’s forehead, it had broken through his iron helmet.

He heard a loud clang of sword aside. Paul leaned back in his saddle, his arms outstretched wide, as though to grapple all the world. A steel bolt was between his eyes. Behind the pillars, three more crossbowmen shouldered their weapons, aiming at Gorvel and his men. The first two crossbowmen turned wrenches hastily, drawing the steel bowstrings.

From the stone barns in the yard, even from the stables, armored warriors came out: two or three scores in total. Gorvel and two of his survived soldiers got encircled with malicious glitter of swords, axes, jagged spearheads.

Rocambole was covered with shields from both sides. He spoke in a loud cold voice that sounded like death itself. “What would you say as your excuse, worm? I’m ready to listen, though I’ll treat you as I wish… Gnusak, is the furnace burning?”

The branded man rubbed his hands with joy, shrieked with delight. “If short of firewood, I bring new in my teeth! Three more came, eh! Came running by themselves, no need to search!”

Gorvel fidgeted in his saddle, looked over the cruel smirking faces in fear. He was surrounded tightly, reached for by predatory hands to drag him down, and the damned crossbowmen — seven of them! — kept aiming at him. He jerked his hand up hastily, to drive Rocambole’s attention, made a strange move across his breast, as though drawing an acute angle.

Rocambole’s eyes opened wide, he started back, as though pushed on the breast. Warily, he put his fingers together, drew a strange sign in the air. Gorvel bent his head. “All back!” Rocambole said, very reluctantly, hoarse of his voice at once. “These are no enemies.”

His warriors retreated, grumbling like animals when driven into cages. Swords and axes, which were raised overhead, went down but remained in hands, while scabbards and covers empty. Their sullen faces showed severe disappointment. Four of them picked up the bodies, dragged away, leaving bloody traces on the white marble stairs. The dead men’s saber and sword were taken away then. The crossbowmen lowered their weapons, but stayed on spot, with drawn steel strings.

Gorvel rode up to Thomas, his voice a dull thrash in the steel basket of his helmet. “You didn’t escape, our mortal… and my personal enemy!”

Thomas, with complete ignorance of the heavy rider hanging over them, turned to Oleg. “This scoundrel is doomed to Hell… but he’s already got it here, in his lifetime!”

“Spit,” Oleg advised him. “Stop even thinking of him.”

Gorvel struck Thomas forcefully on his face. The knight’s head jerked, but he kept his feet, made no step back. With a heavy scuff, Gorvel made a broader swing and smote with great force, trying to smash lips with his gauntlet. Thomas shook his head slightly again, glanced askew at the wonderer who told him sadly, “You revive?.. I’m brimming over… as I had a chew before…” He could hardly move his tongue.

Rocambole, with his beastly senses, felt something wrong. “To the torture chamber!” he cried anxiously. “There we’ll know all.”

Guards gripped the wonderer from both sides, hung on his shoulders. He gave a terrible, inhuman roar. the ropes cracked, then flew up, like thin supple snakes. In two giant leaps, he got on the topmost stair, struck with his fist, and Rocambole made a long arch in the air, fell on the ground before the stunned guards and remained there. motionless.

Thomas strained, tore his chains. The iron endured, but he felt violent might, made a stronger jerk, and his arms flew apart! He stooped hastily, seized the chain on his legs. A ringing crunch, and the end of the crumpled chain remained in hand. With no stop, he crushed the guards who tried to drag him into the cellar, trampled over someone and squashed, rushed after the wonderer.

The rest ran after him, screaming. Gorvel urged his horse upstairs, hooves slid on the smooth marble, the frightened horse stopped and backed.

“Too late!” Oleg cried in a thundering voice. He struck his whole body against a snow-white pillar. Cracks ran down the shiny stone, the pillar bent in the opposite direction, two or three heavy boulders fell out, as though battered with a ram, thundered down the stairs with a thunder, knocking and maiming the guards who ran up.

Thomas gripped another pillar, shook it, imitating the wonderer, but the marble column endured: the roof kept it. In three steps Oleg fell down to dodge the thrown spear, rolled over his head, struck another pillar in his jump. There was a crash above, the colored mosaic started to fall down with a ringing of glass. In place of the pillar, a broad stone stump remained. Heavy boulders rolled in all directions, knocking the guards down, but the heavy castle roof endured, only subsided a bit, showering with no more rain but a colored hail of small pieces of glass and stone.

Oleg ran into the third pillar, knocked it down and reached the fourth one when there came a terrible thunder, a heavy stone slab fell near him, small broken fragments flew sideways. He heard shouts of crushed people, and a stone avalanche came on.

Oleg felt a painful hit on his shoulder. Boulders and slabs were collapsing on him, bas-reliefs, flying nymphs, and headless satyrs darted past. Through a cloud of sparkling dust and fine stone crumbs, he saw the mighty figure of Thomas who snatched, squeezed, threw aside, and snatched again. Then the mass of falling stones and the collapsed roof hid the knight. Oleg dashed there, jumping over the heaps of marble, seeing nothing in the dust cloud. “Thomas!.. Sir Thomas!.. Sir Thomas, where are you?”

Slowly, it grew lighter, the thunder died down. Oleg saw there was no more roof, the sun rays burning the dusty cloud through. It subsided very quickly: that was the dust of marble. “Thomas!” he shouted again. “Where are you?”

The colossal palace was reduced to ruins. Oleg stood waist-deep in white broken stone. The stamps of pillars stuck out, like giant’s teeth, huge boulders had rolled about the green yard. The cloud of heavy marble dust had subsided, forming a silvery coating on the ruins and the grass in the yard.

A small stream of blood came out from under ruins near Oleg. In fear, he threw the stones about and saw two guards lying crisscross. Both looked like toads squashed by a cart wheel. “Thomas!.. Sir Thomas!”

A moan came from the left. Oleg started to throw away the boulders, broken fragments, found protruding legs. Before he could remove the last stones, the whole heap gave a stir, then scattered, and Thomas stood up straight. His eyes were mad, he swayed, grabbing at the air. The torn pieces of chain were ringing on his wrists.

“Were you socked on head?” Oleg asked in his ear.

“I saw the Virgin…” Thomas whispered madly. “First some lightnings flashed, then stars came raining down, then a Pagan god seemed to have socked on the back of my head with his hammer… Sir wonderer, why does everyone strike at the same place?”

“All people are the same,” Oleg muttered. “The prophet of yours said: there is no Gentile or Jew. It means everyone is the same, like planks in a fence. You should have chewed the overcome grass, not swallow it like a hungry duck!”

Two warriors were running from the gate: all the rest of Rocambole’s guard. They yelled with goggled eyes, their swords dangled on belts. The first one saw Thomas and Oleg among ruins, pulled his sword out in the run.

Oleg picked up a huge stone, as large as a horse, threw towards the warriors. It hit heavily against the ground in front of them, loosened the earth, jumped and rolled on, its edge knocked one of the guards down, then the rock smashed the gate and rolled out on the road. The guard remained lying, his healthy hand clutching the injured shoulder. The second one stopped, looked at the strange guests, then at his injured friend, and backed.

Thomas limped heavily across the yard to the utility outhouses. Frightened horses neighed in the stables, the gate cracked. Oleg got out of the ruins and hurried after Thomas. His head was strangely light.

Thomas knocked the gate out, chose horses. Oleg examined them and approved: the knight knew horses better than he knew men. He kept the frightened horses easily, though he had very little of overcome grass, as Oleg had chewed the rest. “Sir wonderer, how long is the effect of overcome grass?”

“The sun is setting,” Oleg replied heavily. “By midnight, it will end…”

“So little?.. We have to take the Holy Grail before midnight! And then we can die, as good Christians…”

“I’m Rodian,” Oleg reminded gloomily.

They rushed out of the gate like a whirlwind, but to Oleg they seemed as slow-moving as freezing snails. Thomas also kept urging, with no real need, the frightened horses who still could not recover from that terrible thunder.

Oleg glanced back at the white heap of stones. “Too good sepulcher for your friend!” he said sulkily.

“Christ told us to forgive,” Thomas sighed insincerely. “Devil will have a long digging in the ruins before he finds the scoundrel’s soul pressed under… Surely, it’s disgusting to take in hands, but he will need to take it to Hell.”

“He can put it straight into his bag,” Oleg advised.

Chapter 30

The sun sank behind the horizon to a half when their road brought them up a hill, from where they could see a high massive castle towering on the hill that had evidently been erected for that very purpose, surrounded by a stone rampart and encircled with a moat of water. A broad drawbridge was thrown across the moat, its thick iron chains glittered in the light of sunset.

“Are you sure,” Thomas asked nervously, “the cup was taken there?”

“No other castle nearby,” Oleg replied without much conviction. “And my charms say your cup is there.”

Thomas glanced slantwise at the wonderer. Ragged, bashed, and worn out, he managed to keep his charms. Though Kite’s hirelings had touched them (Thomas saw it), they were not tempted by a wooden necklace, especially this one: carved roughly, without proper skill.

Horses, wheezing and dripping with foam, brought them up to the gate. By that time the plain was striped with reddish-black shadows. Only a crimson edge still stuck over the skyline, then it sank too, and the dusk fell.

A head in glittering helmet rose over the castle gate. The man was sullen, his face irritated, his eyes under swollen eyelids looked with malice.

Thomas, still ahorse, knocked on the iron-riveted logs of the gate. “Hey, over there! Open!”

“Who you are?” the guard inquired in a voice viscous like old syrup.

Thomas glanced at Oleg’s rags, at his own torn remnants of clothing that hung on him like on a scarecrow. The iron bangles glittered dimly on his hands and legs, the fragments of chains rang. “Don’t you see, numskull? Godly travelers! Pilgrims! Open it, now.”

The guard leaned forward to have a better look at the godly travelers who yelled and swore like villains. “Oh, I see how godly!.. Wait ‘ill morning. Steward comes an’ sorts out.”

“Till morning?” Thomas cried in a scared voice. “It’s not even night now!”

“Soon it be,” the guard explained in a more friendly tone. “Night and day to while away. Have to while a day, and night… we won’t see it, thank God. Our place quiet, what they want here? Can’t stay at home. Roam, roam…” He scratched himself noisily, gave a wolfish, howling yawn.

Thomas gasped with fury. Oleg dismounted, with his face mournful. “Brother Thomas,” he said gently, “please hold my horse. That’s the world created by Rod: people would rather obey strength than truth. Take the horses back, and I’ll knock out the gate of this vile pigsty.”

The guard above burst with resonant laughter, his ill yellow face turned crimson. “Knock out?.. Ha ha!.. Saracen tried it with ram!.. An’ had hard time, like bears near fish…”

Oleg backed three steps, puffed up, held his breath. The guard neighed merrily, but Oleg rushed on the gate suddenly, hit against the tightly-knocked-together logs. Thomas shuddered with terrible crash, thunder, the screech of iron strips torn apart. Horses jumped, trying to break off the bridge into the moat, Thomas held them with iron hand. When he looked at the gate again, he could not believe his eyes. It seemed to be smashed with a rock from a giant catapult. Huge bars kept the folds from flying open, but the whole gate had been broken out: it lay in the yard in twenty feet from the breach. The walls of the stone arch had gaps from torn-out rods, the crumble of bricks rained down.

The wonderer lay, sprawled like a frog, on the gate: he looked like having slid there on ice that way. Thomas barely had time to turn horses when Oleg rose, beating the brick dust and small crumbles loudly off his clothes and swearing as only can swear a pilgrim who saw a lot of the world, passed Crimea and Rome, spent a night under the priest’s pear tree, not to mention Jerusalem where every Tom, Dick and Harry had been to.

Thomas rode through the breach proudly, leading the wonderer’s horse by reins. The survived guard was hanging above, shrieking shrilly. He was no more crimson but white, his feet scratched the air helplessly.

Other guards ran out of the building near the gate, stunned by the thunder. Their eyes popped out as they saw, in place of their indestructible gate, a gaping forest, far and dark, with some unwell blow coming from there. Massive hooks and hinges that had once been holding the heavy gate folds stuck out from the walls on both sides.

Thomas stopped the second horse near Oleg who was still beating small pebbles off his rags with disgust. Thomas pointed at the empty saddle, Oleg waved away sullenly. “Mounting, dismounting… What a monotonous life! ”

He walked across the yard to the main building. Some warriors ran down the porch, clanging with steel. Thomas kept snatching his hip: no sword there anymore.

They were surrounded, but Oleg, with no look at the warriors at all, went straight upstairs. Thomas vaulted off, threw the reins arrogantly into the face of the closest clot with axe in hands, and followed the wonderer. He heard a shriek behind: as the clot was grabbing the reins, he dropped the axe on his foot and went yelling, hopping along, gripping the injured foot with both hands, while horses, still trembling with fear, bustled about the yard.

The stone stairs were not pressed into the ground by their feet, as Thomas apprehended, not a single one even cracked. With relief, he realized that, despite all the monstrous strength, his weight was the same, as the bunches of overcome grass weighed less than a dead mouse.

Thomas and Oleg came into the entrance hall, which was all lit by the crimson light of a huge blazing fireplace near the far wall. Two armored men dried some cloths by the fire, their waders dried on the iron fender. There was a smell of fish pluck. Both men glanced over with surprise at the strange ragged newcomers who were followed, at a respectful distance, by three apprehensive soldiers with bare swords.

Oleg got tired of clanging sounds behind. He wheeled round suddenly, made a horrific grimace, and stamped his feet. The three soldiers were blown away at once, as though by hurricane. They collided at the door, a dropped sword rang, then a heavy body was heard to be rolling downstairs, crackling, crunching, and rattling. Thomas made a move to come back for the sword, which lay on the threshold and shimmered like a toadstool in the moonlight, but Oleg clutched his hand tightly. “Sir monk, do arms befit us?”

Thomas released himself with caution, his face grew white, his eyes suffering. “Sir wonderer, one should eat overcome grass, not gorge on it like a horse!”

Oleg replied in a grieving voice. “Grasses are to be found nowhere in our land in winter! Unlike these lands, where they have only summer. We hyperboreans have a habit to get full up at once.”

They passed the hall. A guard jumped away from the ornate inner door: something warned him not to stop the strange vagrants. Thomas kicked the door open before Oleg could do it. The folds flew open with a crack, the door bar, wrenched out roughly, flopped on the floor, some debris rained down from the ceiling.

The great hall was decorated with swords, axes, maces, and knightly shields over the carpets on the walls. In the middle, two tables were surrounded by benches made of halves of a split oak. Oleg nodded to Thomas, explaining silently that was a measure against brawlers who could, in full swing of a feast, lift a bench and brandish it, crushing others.

Both tables were formed by thick marble slabs rested on grey square blocks of stone. There were blazing fireplaces on two opposite walls, a good smell of fragrant smoke and burnt hair. The floor was made of huge slabs, the same as the walls of that gloomy castle, the cracks stuck with grey clay. However, the heavy blocks were fitted so tight that an ant could hardly pass between any of them.

Thomas sat down at the table and spoke haughtily, addressing no one in particular. “Hey, lord!.. Run for him, you bow-legged! I’ll have all of you flogged!”

Some heads, in horned helmets and without those, peeped into the door the friends had come through. Thomas’s menacing roar made the heads vanish. After a while, they came back, but not all of them.

Oleg walked along the walls, examined the arms. His heart pounded resonantly, about to get smashed up against the rib cage. Should he approach the door, the heads vanished and fast thumping was heard from the stairs, as though some scattered peas rolled down up to the cellar.

They heard a heavy ringing sound from the far door. A tall man emerged there: clad in iron armor all over, he looked so alike a metal stature that Oleg turned his head involuntarily to check whether Thomas was in place. Thomas, all ragged, his hands and feet bare, pulled an understanding smirk on.

The other knight was covered with gleaming steel from head to feet, but his raised visor allowed to see a narrow weather-beaten face, a red face burnt mercilessly by the southern sun. When he stepped in, some warriors appeared behind him, with a glitter of swords and heavy axes in their hands.

One of the warriors held a blazing torch, but the knight’s face was in the shade.

“Who are you?” the knight roared, his hand on the hilt of huge sword. He sounded like a lion and his voice, however closely Oleg listened to it, had no hint of confusion or fear, which are so often concealed by a might roar — only surprise and curiosity.

Oleg was silent, collecting his thoughts. Thomas cast a slantwise glance at him, replied in a deliberately meek voice, mimicking his friend. “We… humble pilgrims… Go from the Holy Sepulcher to Rus’. Live like song birds that walk roads and peck dung… An’ sing praises to Holy Virgin… Wear fetters…” He raised his hands to demonstrate the steel bangles that had rubbed his flesh away up to the bone. The chain fragments gave a tinkle.

The knight came, in a slow pace, up to the table where Thomas sat. His armor rang at every step, which made Thomas flinch with jealousy. The warriors came in after him but they dispersed along the walls. Each second man had a shiny broad-headed Saracen spear.

The knight stopped in two steps from Thomas, peered at him. “Humble pilgrims, eh? Since when has Thomas Malton of Gisland, which is on the bank of Don, become a humble vagrant? You used to go to sleep with no wench but your sword!”

Thomas gave a start but kept his seat, replied in a slow controlled voice. “As you see, Sir Burlan, I have no sword now.”

“Neither a wench,” the knight spoke in an unpleasant voice where a jeer could be heard. “Only a pilgrim friend instead… ahem. In this land, a fever is picked up by one and vile habits — by another… Have you lost your sword?”

Thomas blushed, blood rushed up to his cheeks at once, but with a visible effort he made his shoulders relax, replied in an even voice. “With the help of Our Lady, we get what we want without a sword. There’s only base folk, and I bare my noble sword only for noble foes. For example, the thief of Holy Grail had his death of my bare hand… No, he was killed like a dog — by the stone I hurled at him. And now I came for the Holy Grail!”

Burlan’s eyes were the color of water running over the river boulders. His eyelids all but closed, as he narrowed his eyes in a predatory way. “If you come without armor, like a bird without feathers… like a plucked crow, as we knights put it, you shall be treated with as much honor as a common tramp. If you don’t please us, we’ll crucify you at the gate!”

The warriors began to stir, exchanged glances, then started to approach in cautious short steps, their spearheads aimed at Thomas’s chest. Thomas was slow to respond, and Oleg (he stood by the wall) asked Burlan innocently, “The old gate or the new one?”

Burlan did not seem to get it. A warrior jumped up to him, whispered obsequiously in his ear. Burlan started, stepped quickly to the window, looked outside for a while, unable to believe his eyes, then went pallid, his fingers of both hands clutched the windowsill. There were still faint screams, shouts, a clang of steel heard from the yard. “What’s wrong with our gate?” Burlan demanded in a constrained voice.

“Rotten through,” Oleg replied uncaringly. “A blow and a spit reduced it to pieces. You’ll need a new one to crucify a man on! Surely, the times are hard…”

Thomas slapped on the table impatiently. “Sir Burlan! I want back the cup that was stolen from me. Immediately!”

The warriors along the walls exchanged glances. Burlan turned away from the window. His voice was still constrained, as though an invisible hand held his throat. “The cup was left for me to store. I have no idea why so much fuss about it: my chests are full of silver and golden cups, while this one is plain copper. But I was asked to keep it in my place. Asked by a noble man. And I will comply his request.”

“Where’s the cup?” Thomas demanded.

Burlan glanced over at the warriors who crowded at the door, blocking it. He gave a malevolent smile, his voice grew louder. “Straight behind this wall. On the shelf near the lamp. Take it if you can.”

The warriors gripped their swords, scowling at two unarmed travelers from under their helmets pulled over their brows. Behind them, some spearheads and spikes of helmets could be seen.

Thomas started to rise, red with fury. Oleg intruded quickly. “Your Grace, I have a lower rank… I’ll fetch it!”

As he stood near the wall pointed by Burlan, he bumped against it. There was a crash, deep cracks ran along the wall, huge blocks thundered out. Oleg stepped after them, leaving a cloud of dust in the breach.

Thomas gave a start but made himself stay at the table and adopt an air of boredom. Burlan grew as white as snow, his jaw dropped, his eyes goggled and glassy. Two of his warriors dropped their spears and ran away, shrieking.

They heard shouts and clang on the other side of the breach, then a hunched figure emerged there, in the crimson light of the fireplace. Oleg kicked aside a block of stone, as large as a bull’s head, his sneeze raised a small cloud of dust. He carried a copper cup, pressing it against his chest, shielded from small falling stones with his palm. With a humble bow, he put the cup in front of Thomas and bowed again. “Your Superiority, that’s your chalice.”

Thomas touched the salient side of the cup, greenish with age, with fingertips, said to no one in particular, “What the ways in this pigsty!.. Aren’t you going to feed your humble guests? Where would we have our next feast?”

Oleg dusted off noisily, slapped clouds of dust out of his rags. He heard a sad note in Thomas’s apparently cheerful voice but said nothing: no one had ever come back from another world to tell what is the food there like. Small stones glittered in his hair. The block he had kicked away was lying on the other side of the hall. Warriors glanced at it with fear: hardly any of them could simply move it.

Burlan turned his head with a screech. “Bring food for these… pilgrims… guests,” he said in a hoarse voice.

Carefully, Oleg sat down on the bench near Thomas. He moved slowly, like a clever horse among fragile dishes, even felt the bench before sitting. Burlan stood by the window but did not look in it anymore: his goggled eyes were glued to the breach in the wall, through which a man could pass ahorse.

Oleg made an inviting gesture. “Sir lord… Burlan or Burdan… or Buridan… would you have dinner with us?”

Burlan gave a start, took his eyes with effort off the gaping breach. Oleg waved at him welcomingly, and Burlan came to, in wooden steps, and sat down on the bench facing Thomas. As their eyes met, the last blood rushed away from Burlan’s face: the eyes of ragged knight errant shone like two stars of Bethlehem, bright red roses flashed and faded on his cheeks.

Behind Thomas, there was a breach where men rushed about, shouted, dragged someone from under the stones, then carried him away. The fallen torches smoked on the floor. A servant in a greasy, soiled apron came through the gap, stepping over huge stone blocks that lay as far as the hall. The tray in his hands quivered. When he put it on the middle of the table, Thomas winced: the meat was cold and the bread so hard that it could be used to break another wall.

“That’s on a fast day, eh?” Oleg sympathized. “It should be fish, grass…”

Thomas who had just stuck his teeth into the first slice of meat recoiled. “Sir lay brother,” he said with vexation, “your reminders are either too early or too late!”

The servant hurried to take the meat away. Thomas followed him with hungry eyes.

Oleg cried after him. “Fish for him!.. Fish!.. I saw a big fish here — it scratched itself against the fence when we passed… er… through the gate. Scratched and grunted!”

Burlan shifted his stunned gaze between Thomas and Oleg. Both had very serious hungry faces.

Oleg sniffed. “Good host would have something to wet our whistles,” he said with a jeer. “But you see, sir abbe, these people are starving!”

Burlan blushed with insult and blurted out. “Five barrels of wine of Cyprus here, across three halls! And in my cellar, I have twelve barrels of madeira, Cahors wine, and northern moonshine!”

“Thank you for information,” Oleg replied politely.

Burlan had barely bit his tongue, as he realized his mistake, when the strange vagrant bumped, like a blind man, into the wall pointed by the master, broke through with a terrible crash, made a breach from the ceiling to the floor. Huge blocks, each would do to smash a bear, rained down his head and shoulders, rolled down his back. He sneezed of dust and vanished.

Burlan was yellow like a dead man. Blue veins twitched on the temples of his head, his face fell, his nose sharpened. Soon there was some more thunder, an irritated roar, crash of rolling stones, heavy steps, then a terrible crash and thunder again, sounds of falling stones, frightened screams, a plaintive cry.

Fresh roast meat was brought in. Thomas gorged on it, as he suffered a beastly hunger. His fingers scratched against an empty tray before he knew it. The servants vanished. At once, there was the “fish” that scratched itself against the fence and grunted, and also the “fish” that flapped its wings in the reeds. Actually, Thomas could have real meat with no remorse: a traveler may lose a count of days or even the calendar itself, but the wonderer reminded of the fast inopportunely… Thomas’s hand stopped, he felt a surge of fury. What if the wonderer was just teasing? A bloody Pagan, he can hardly know the days of fast… Maybe he wanted more meat left to him?

He felt the empty tray again, cast an annoyed glance at the servants. They started to rush about faster, serving roast swans, geese, ducks, quail, a roast boar by the way, a couple of baked turkeys with apples, some venison… When, finally, they brought some crucians fished in the pond, Thomas waved that away sluggishly: he was full up, and his friend would have to start from a roast bear or, at least, an ox.

In times a thunder was coming into the hall, broken with short periods of silence. As Thomas ate, he did not listen much, but then felt a vague surprise. Burlan had said the wine was just across three halls, hadn’t he? Then Oleg should break through only three walls… Or four?.. But there was much more crash, anyway. Could the poor wonderer get lost in the labyrinth of the castle halls and passages, so unusual to a Pagan like him? And now he walks everywhere, breaking through the walls, demolishing stairs and passages, his breath choked with dust… And I, Thomas Malton, sit here and pig out while my hungry friend roams the strange castle?

Thomas spat the bones out on the middle of the table, started to rise, with strong intention to walk on the distant noise… or walking in the opposite direction would do better if the wonderer had gone far?.. when a scary crack ran down the opposite wall. There was a thunder, huge boulders crashed into the hall, rolled about it, and the hunched figure of the wonderer appeared in the breach. With a forty-basket barrel on his back, he looked like Atlas.

The edge of the barrel got stuck in the gap. The wonderer gave an angry roar, kicked out the protruding stones below, elbowed away the boulder that bulged out on a level with his shoulder. A big stone fell down on his foot, and the wonderer spoke ill of Christ, the Virgin and her knight who sat gobbling and snapping his jaws instead of helping his friend in Christian way before he sets to drinking in knightly way — gorging on…

Oleg tried to get through again. Thomas yelled to warn him. “The barrel will break!”

His terrible shout made torches drop from the walls and the helmet of the warrior who stood steadfastly in the doorway fly away. Reluctantly, the wonderer set the barrel down on the scattered stone blocks, went over all the possible pedigree of the Virgin with own insets. Hell burn this Pagan! Roaring, Oleg brought down all but the whole wall, grappled the barrel and brought it to the table. The blocks of heavy stone had rolled about the hall, one stopped at the very table. With joy, Thomas put his foot on that stone and rested his elbow on the knee.

Carefully, Oleg put the barrel down near the table, knocked out the bottom with a spat. The befuddling smell hit their nostrils. Thomas gasped, grabbed the biggest scoop eagerly. Burlan’s face showed despair.

Oleg looked at the lord and nodded. “I don’t like the wine of Cyprus, it can’t be helped. I reached it, tasted… ‘No!’ I thought. I’ve always loved sweet things. The Cahors wine would do! I went to get it but lost my way… I hope you had no urgent need of those paintings stolen from Jerusalem? They were ruined when those marble statues, stolen either in Mesopotamia or Babylon, fell on them… They would not fall, but I slipped on the spilled precious attar of rose when I caught on those barrels by accident — I mistook them blindly for some wall design…”

Thomas drank much and enjoyed it. His head was strangely light and empty. Sounds grew louder, then quietened again. Even the hall seemed to narrow at one moment and broaden at another, torches first went pale, then blazed up so bright that it made his eyes screw up at once. He reached for the meat, but his fingers stretched for scores of feet and the plate turned out to be one the other end of the table. He burst with drunken laughter, snatched a big slice, almost dropped it down but caught in the air, sank his teeth in it with a roar.

Only three warriors remained in the hall. They clustered at the door, ready to rush away at every moment. When Thomas dropped his meat, they exchanged glances, one backed and ran downstairs on the sly. If the two strangers get drunk, they’d smash the castle like a doghouse. Either it had walls made of stone or those two came from Hell for the soul of the master…

Oleg gobbled meat, washed it down with the wine he scooped. Burlan quivered, not daring to rise from the table. He gestured to his servants to serve new courses as frequently as possible, and the pilgrims gulped down piles of hazel-hens, hocks of deer, fillets of beef, washing all of it by waterfalls of wine. Thomas got red, his cheeks glistened, his eyes roved. Suddenly he began to bowl the marching song of Roncesvalles. Dishes started to shake, the thick dust with small stones poured down from the ceiling, and the third wall gave a dry crackle, as a winding crack ran down, from the vault to the floor.

Thomas made an encouraging gesture to Burlan, and the lord began to sing in a shaky voice. He sounded like an old goat bleating. Thomas frowned: he recalled Burlan’s voice to be different. Could the host be mocking at him? Could he mimic his guests, which was simply inadmissible for any European, even uneducated one, not to say anything of a civilized man whom a noble knight of Christ’s army should be…

Just two warriors remained at the door: backing, jerking their heads up in fright to look at the crackling vault. Thomas got silent for a moment, taking a breath, and a trample of feet running away came from the corridor. With ardor in heart, Thomas sang about the last battle of Roland, in which he slayed Saracen with his beloved sword, wishing no mercy of them. A new, broader crack ran across the first one. Small stones rained down.

Oleg clapped Thomas on the shoulder, pointed at the crack, and stood up. “Thank you for your hospitality, lord. That’s our way: everything for guests! But we mustn’t outstay our welcome. Sir Thomas, take the cup. We must go.”

Pale Burlan managed to raise himself up his feeble feet. His armor clang like dishes in a cart pulled by a horse galloping along a forest road, over stumps and logs.

“And I want to paint the town red!” Thomas declared stubbornly. “A death I’d like is to drown in a barrel of wine!” He gave a loud hiccup, scooped some wine hastily and drained it.

Oleg clapped on his shoulder. “Sir Thomas!” he said in a warning tone. “The last time we painted the town red we ruined all of it… That’s no good!”

“And here… hic!.. we r-r-r-ruin…” The scoop in his hand got crumpled like a burdock leaf. Thomas threw it away indignantly, groped about the table, felt the plate where the roast boar had been very short time before.

“No good,” Oleg repeated with reproach. “That time you were punished by forty bows and two days fasting without wine and I, as a Pagan, was told to sacrifice to Peroun two sheep, a goat, and three Christians! If they tell me the same now, where am I to find sheep and goat in this place? Though it’s good with Christians…”

He stared with dim eyes at the last brave warrior who held the door steadfastly, though there were terrible holes in both walls, each large enough for two men to ride through in a row. The warrior went pale, gave a sob. He seemed to be blown away by wind, with only a fast tapping of heels heard, then a door slammed below.

“And you,” Oleg went on persuading, “you’d rather burn in hell than do two days without wine! Let’s go.”

As Thomas, in his tragic absent-mindedness, thought over the wonderer’s words, he rolled the iron dish into a pipe, smoothed it again carefully, like a crumpled parchment, and rolled again. His eyes were dim. Oleg raised him by shoulders. Thomas, in his last gleam of consciousness, grabbed the cup, pressed against his breast with both hands.

Oleg turned to Burlan. “Tell them to drive up quickly two remounts! With blankets and food for a week. And give our clothes back to us. Do it quickly, or he’ll smash the place all over!.. As he destroyed the Temple of Solomon, the Gardens of Semiramis… and the Tower of Babylon — the second, smaller one…”

With his help, Thomas was clad in full knight’s armor. Oleg hurried to lead the knight outdoors. The floor was rocking like sea waves. Shadows darted ahead, some heads stuck out and vanished. All the doors were wide open, neighs and frightened screams heard from the yard.

Oleg led Thomas down the porch, embracing him by waist. Men bustled about in the dark night and red torchlight, carried sacks and saddle bags. Two saddled horses were jumping, in fright of shouts and torches, trying to pull their reins free. The bravest men took the risk of leading them up to the porch.

Oleg helped Thomas into the saddle, tucked the reins in his hand. Thomas went drowsy at once. In terror, Oleg felt his own body get heavier quickly. His legs seemed to turn cast-iron, his mouth dry, his tongue scratching the throat. “Hail,” he muttered, “ssssee us off not…”

Once mounted, he took the reins from Thomas’s hand, drove the horses to the breach in a slow pace. The scattered blocks had been removed, but the gate still lay in the middle of the yard. Smiths and carpenters in the torchlight were tearing the iron cramps and stripes off, dragging the heavy logs away. As they saw the travelers who had knocked the gate out coming, they dropped crowbars and ran away.

Losing his strength quickly, Oleg glanced at Thomas with fear. The knight reeled, then lay down on the horse’s mane. In the breach, there was a clatter of axes and hammers. Oleg thought sluggishly that they, he and the valiant knight, were too weak to beat off sparrows.

Suddenly the clatter stopped abruptly, some shadows darted away and vanished in the dark. The horses galloped out briskly, with a feeling of freedom, from under the stone vault into the night. The cold air chilled to the marrow. Oleg curled up, feeling as though skinned. He took a firmer grip on the reins, as heavy as soaked logs, with his fingers going numb, used his last strength to kick the horse with heels.

The road glimmered dimly in the ghastly starlight: no moon. The earth looked scarily dark, only the tops of knolls, stamps, and boulders were silvered a bit.

Giant trees dashed past, on both sides of the road. Horses galloped on, as though along a narrow valley, the faint starlight silvered the path a bit. The cold of death was coming deeper into Oleg’s stiffened body that had spent all of its vitality before, his heart beat slower and quieter. Finally, trees came closer, branches intertwined overhead, screening off the sky.

Their horses stopped in complete darkness, blacker than pitch or tar.

That was the last thing Oleg could recall.

Chapter 31

In a strange dream, he saw himself lying on the river bank. Waves lap in two steps from his head, a fish jumps out to catch low-flying gnats. Watching that fat fish, he feels desperate hunger: not for gnats but for silly fat fish.

He struggled his heavy eyelids up. He is lying on the bank of a river, its waves lap in two steps. The light is dim red, strangely diffused, the sky all covered with low clouds.

Oleg felt his body with a sluggish surprise: half-naked, ribs protruding like bones on a picked corpse, his belly all but stuck to his back. His swollen tongue was scratching against the palate, but once Oleg stirred, he felt a desperate hunger. No thirst, though his mouth was dry, but hunger. He would like a big fat fish.

He heard a moan nearby. Thomas lay there with his eyes closed. He was emaciated, his eyes sunken, his cheeks covered with two-week bristle. His gaunt body was naked to the waist, bones protruding on his broad chest, ribs about to break through the tightly stretched skin.

Oleg shook Thomas by shoulder. His own arm was moving dead, Oleg felt surprised at its being so thin. The knight heaved a sigh, his eyes opened. His look was perplexed, but then his pale lips curved in a feeble smile. “Sir wonderer… I thought we parted… As your place is in Hell, I’d have to sing alone with harp in hands… But the Virgin remembers of men’s friendship, so she placed us together…” He turned his head with effort, looked with surprise at the strange reddish clouds that hung straight over their heads.

Oleg sat up. He had a dull headache and saw double. The water was purling in two steps, a big stream rather than a river, but, strangely, Oleg could barely see the opposite bank. Was something wrong with his eyes? He had never seen such reddish dusk — or dawn? — before, though in his long life he’d been to many corners of the wide world created by immortal Rod.

He heard a perplexed voice. “Is it Hell or Heaven? If Heaven, then I should have a harp in hands, be seated on a cloud and sing praises to the Almighty… Or the Lord knows I have less ear for music than any bear in Britain and my voice makes crows drop as they fly? And I’ve never played harp… I played dice, thirty-one, twenty-one and vampire, I played joker but harp… er… But if that’s Hell, where are those creatures with tails whom I saw after every carouse that lasted more than a week?”

There was a quiet rumble overhead, then a loud splash in the river. Oleg felt creepy all over with an indistinct fear. His fingers found the necklace of charms, went counting them convulsively.

“But what if Purgatory?” the knight continued in a thoughtful voice. “A place neither for you nor for me?.. No way for you to our Heaven. Neither for me, a devout Christian, to your Pagan paradise, as your shameless orgies are forbidden to the warriors of Christ… unless one was drunken or couldn’t control his feelings, but then he should confess to the army chaplain. Our gods could arrange it: to put both of us, lest separate us, into the Purgatory. That’s a place between Heaven and Hell. Neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring, as we put it. Not a thing, neither one way nor the other…”

They heard steps. Oleg alerted. Thomas raised a bit, peering into the reddish semi-dark, gave a moan of weakness but kept his body rested on his arms, thin as splinters. Oleg observed the reddish dusk as closely as he could. Some vague spots, which could easily be taken for horned mugs or sharp-toothed jaws, floated before his strained eyes. Thomas slapped on the bare ground, groping for his sword, muttered a curse and bit his tongue with caution: he did not know whether one was allowed to swear in the purgatory or he would be transferred to hell for that. He had no fear of the boiling tar but a fear to part with his true friend.

A woman turned up from the semi-dark. There was nothing a moment before, she seemed to emerge out of thin air: slender and lither, with a paunchy jug in hands. Oleg smelled a befuddling fragrance but kept his eyes on the woman, not the jug. She was naked to the waist, with beautiful high bosoms, in a long skirt. However, both friends were naked to the waist too.

“We are in the Mahometan paradise!” Thomas whispered anxiously, but his eyes were glued on the beautiful woman. “I have Saracen boots on, they could confuse…”

The young girl put the jug down between Thomas and Oleg, took two silver cups off her belt. Her moves were graceful, she kept smiling. Thomas blushed but couldn’t take his eyes off her maidenly snow-white bosoms, with pointed teats that seemed to be made of pink granite.

“Is it paradise?” Thomas asked in Saracen. “Are you a houri? And where are the rest twenty thousand?”

She bared her pointed white teeth in a smile, answered in a strange language, which Oleg hadn’t heard for ages but, strangely, he could still understand it easily. He gave a start of amazement, felt his back shivery. “Where are we?” he said slowly, choosing the words of the Agathyrsian language with effort.

The girl’s eyebrows flew up high, her eyes opened as wide as they could. She backed, said hastily, “The elder come and explain. And now you drink mountain mead.” Oleg felt creepy with fear again, as he watched her vanish at once.

Thomas followed her with shiny eyes. “What a jump!.. She did not expect anyone to know her language.”

Oleg tilted the jug carefully over the silver cup. From the narrow mouth, a strange dark liquid streamed out, with no splash. The smell was pungent. “She was right,” he replied.

“But you…”

Oleg brought the cup to his lips, made a cautious sip, listened to himself, drained the rest of the strange mead with more confidence. It made his stomach heavier, his body liven up, his heart beat with more force.

Thomas drank his part. “Mountain mead?” he said with perplexity. “It feels like liquid meat… Sir wonderer, I think we are in your Pagan hell!”

“Slavs have no hell,” Oleg reminded. “Hell was invented by Christians.”

“Or your Pagan heaven. No difference. Our Heaven is for fleshless souls, and here I feel a stitch, a thirst, and other things… I’m sure we can fight here too and our wounds will heal at midday.”

“That belongs to Valhalla,” Oleg explained patiently. “The paradise of Scandinavians. Rus’ lies to the south of them and to the north of Eastern Roman Empire…” He lay down, satiety spread over his body, his eyelids became heavy, he couldn’t help closing his eyes.

“Is Rus’ between Aleman and Pole?”

“Closer to Steppes… Sir knight, abandon your vain hopes. We are in no hell, no paradise, not even purgatory. We shall hear the godly music some other time.”

Thomas touched himself with amazement. “That’s why I feel so alive!” he said with surprise. “But you promised we’ll die!”

“Promises are like piecrust… I can’t fathom myself what could hamper. Off chance it will come right…”

“That mysterious ‘off chance’ again!”

For the second time Oleg woke up with hunger again. He saw a new jug, bigger and broad-mouthed one, on a flat stone. Thomas was asleep, his arms outstretched, the reddish dusk curled behind him. Clouds hung overhead. Oleg felt something wrong: for the time it took him to have sleep out and get hungry, no cloud had moved or changed its shape.

Some voices and laughter came from the left, a crackle of coals, a smell of birch firewood. He heard horses neigh nearby and a strange many-voiced echo repeat after them but, as close as Oleg peered, he could see no people, no fire, no horses. Feeling weak and ill, he struggled up, walked on the voices. He staggered, the world before his eyes went dark in times, in other times he saw a flash of reddish stars.

The fire was revealed suddenly, as though a tent curtain was opened before Oleg. Some men and women are sitting by the fire. Everyone is small, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, their faces as white as mealworms. They have elaborate clothes on, as though for a celebration, but sit on stones, lie on the bare ground. Some thin slices of meat, separated from each other with fragrant leaves, hang on willow twigs over the coals. As fat drips down on the coals, bluish smoke flies up.

“Good day,” Oleg said in the language of Agathyrsians. He stopped in three steps from the fire. “Or evening?”

Young boys jumped up in haste, making room by the fire for him. Oleg saw ghostly pallid faces with blue lips turned to him from every side. Everyone had strangely big eyes, the color of ripe acorns, that seemed goggled in surprise. They watched him with astonishment. When Oleg sat down by the fire, the boy who looked the eldest told him with caution, “We have eternal twilight here, stranger.”

Oleg nodded, his watchfulness and anxiety still with him. He felt something strange about those people but could not fathom what it was. His charms seemed to have run wild: they stuck in fingers all at once. “Twilight… Why?”

“You don’t know? That’s strange… We are in the lower world.”

Oleg took in their serious faces at a glance, looked around. The lower world was what Slavic sorcerers called the place for the souls of dead people. Ordinary people, not heroes. Heroes, ascetics, and righteous men go to paradise, while the rest get here. There was no lower world in the past, when the souls of dead people stayed on earth to incarnate into animals, birds, fish, even bugs and trees. So there used to be a soul cycle. People could understand the tongues of animals and birds, though with effort. Soon after, that common kinship was only known to sorcerers, but the world remained integral — until gods created paradise and the lower world… And far to the south, in hot India where Arpoksai brought his tribe from the Upper Dnieper, they still have neither paradise nor the lower world. The souls of their dead still get into animals to return, after many incarnations, into a human body again…

“When did you die?” Oleg asked.

People around the fire stiffened, goggled their eyes at him. He felt something wrong again. “Die?” the eldest one asked back.

“Die,” Oleg said again. “How else could you get here?”

People exchanged glances. Finally, a young-looking man with deathly pale face told him, also with great caution, “Our forefathers came here. But they came alive… as we are.”

Oleg felt his charms, glanced the strained faces over quickly. The people also felt nervous, that gave him some comfort. Thoughts darted about his head fervently, Oleg ran over the options, threw some of them away. “We seem to have the same name for different things,” he said at last.

Annoyed, he reminded himself that in the times when Agathyrs led his tribe away from the banks of Dnieper, after he had lost to Scyth the contest in drawing the bow of their grandfather, there was still a soul circle. No need of the underground world, so it did not exist. The need arose when humans received the obligation to remain human even after death. To achieve it, people started to bury their dead straightened. And if the body was burnt, the pot to collect ashes was either made in the shape of human figure or had a human face painted on it. Agathyrs could not get into the lower world. It simply did not exist then![19]

“Does everyone know this world is underground?” he asked.

They watched him closely. Shivering in his soul, Oleg noticed all of them had sharp, penetrating eyes. Their sights touched his mind like invisible delicate fingers, but Oleg was used to keeping his thoughts and feelings hidden behind a solid fence.

“You are smart,” the eldest one said. His voice was flat, with no hint of feelings. “Very quick at it… No, the tribe knows not. Many generations changed since the day when Agathyrs led the last of his people into a deep cave to save them from enemies who were coming upon… Only we, initiated sorcerers, know the truth: we and our herds roam about great caves!”

Oleg did not falter. He felt tenacious eyes on him. His brain worked quickly, thoughts replaced each other like flames.

“Do you know the way out?” he asked.

“Now we do,” the eldest one replied. “But that time the entrance collapsed behind Agathyrs and his people. The earthquake all but ruined the tribe… Many died, the rest had hard time. They explored the cave, using their torches, found a way deep into, through a whole succession of colossal caves, some big enough to house ten such tribes!.. They had to cross underground rivers, round the lakes. Huge blind creatures lived in their depth of those, white and huge like serpents…”

Oleg closed his eyes, listening to the dull monotonous voice, and imagined all that terror when people ran out of their torches on the third day, started to burn clothes and broken fragments of carts. Then the wood was also over, leaving them in creepy dark… It was pitch-dark when a big animal attacked women, killed two and injured five. Men managed to kill it despite the dark, though several of them were injured by swords and spears in that terrible night battle. The tribe made lamps of the fat of dead animal. Then they would kill other cave animals, eat their meat, make bow strings of their sinews and lamps of their fat…

Many people died, unable to stand the life without sun, but those who survived gave rise to a new tribe. Agathyrs and his sons would always come ahead of the main party to explore every crack, every way down. In the four hundredth year of cave life, after many generations had changed, one of the walls burst with a crash and opened a cave so large that others, which saw the life and death of those generations, seemed small forest glades as against it. In that cave, connected with some others, big and small, strange grass grew, amazing animals lived, and some blind fish never seen before splashed in lakes and rivers.

By that time, only Agathyrs and two of his sons, one of whom was a sorcerer, remained of the eldest generation. Others had long lives, several times as long as a common man’s, but they had less sunny blood of gods in their veins, so they got old and died… few of them, as the rest perished before, in fierce fighting with cave monsters. Agathyrs dreamed of the return above. He even prepared arms to revenge the offenders, but, not long ago, he was also reached by doom: he perished in a campaign, fighting the monster who attacked his party suddenly. Agathyrs was the last living man of those who had seen the sun. His sons were born underground, the two of them who still live are decrepit old men…

“But how did we get here?” Oleg inquired tensely. “If you saw no sun…”

“No sun, but surface,” the elder one replied. “Every six hundred years, as entrusted by Agathyrs, two or three men of the most initiated sorcerers make a long, exhausting way above. They climb for two or three months. Once it took half a year. Then we wait for a rainy night, when the night sky is covered with clouds… Last time it were me, Taras and Nazar who made the ascent. My name is Ostap. Straight out of the crevice, we found you. We did not know people above can still gorge on the overcome grass! In our tribe, even a child would not eat a blade more than he needs, so we had no antidote with us, which is, definitely, unforgivable for sorcerers. We should be ready for any case, shouldn’t we?”

Oleg felt searching looks at him. “The overcome grass is extinct above. They tell tales of it, but no one knows what she looks like. I found it by chance…”

“But you knew it was overcome grass?”

“I knew but people had forgot. I’m a sorcerer, so I know more than others.”

They ate meat in silence. Ostap told Oleg there were big serpents in caves and beasts much bigger and scarier than serpents: they would hunt serpents as wolves hunt hares, kill and eat them. Also they hunted huge slow animals that looked like turtles, but each one was the size of a hill, its bone plates as thick as a log. When those animals fought, their roar rent the air, made big stones fall from walls and the invisible sky, killing and injuring people and cattle. Once Agathyrsians suffered very much of those monsters, dying without number, until their warriors, under the guidance of sorcerers and Agathyrs himself, made traps for the beasts. Since that, people were safe, then started to press on the monsters, bit by bit, winning new caves from them.

They heard steps. Thomas came out of the thick air suddenly. As he saw Oleg, his face lit up, he gave a polite bow to everyone around the fire. Ostap pointed at the place near Oleg, gave the knight a twig with stringed slices of roast meat.

“He doesn’t know our tongue,” Oleg explained. “He’s from another tribe.” They looked with disbelief. Someone tried to speak to the knight, Thomas made guilty smiles and helpless gestures.

“He doesn’t understand,” Oleg said again. “Out there, many things have changed. You came underground when the world was young and all the tribes and nations spoke the same tongue. Or almost the same… at least they could understand each other. One pronounced ‘a’ where another said ‘o’, the third spoke with a twang, but it was understandable. However, changes are fast there above. The nations you left… no trace of them anymore! Even their names are forgotten. Brave Agathyrs forged his swords in vain. He would have found no one to revenge, no one to burn in a slow fire, no one to skin…”

Oleg started to retell the conversation to Thomas. The knight stopped him with a gesture: talk now and retell later.

“Shall we see you tribe?” Oleg asked.

Ostap looked aside. “If you are ready to stay with us, you can do it now… But if you want to go back to the Upper World, then it is up to the Council of Elder Sorcerers to decide. If they decide to let you go, then you will see nothing… Every tribe has its secrets. Please don’t take it as offense.”

“All our life is war,” Oleg told him sadly. “When shall we see the Elders?”

“Life here is a slow stream,” Ostap replied. “But you have good luck. The Council will meet in three days.”

Their life streamed, as far as Thomas got it, with no division into day and night, in the eternal twilight. The walls were inhabited by glowing moss, and luminous mold grew in places, but that was a faint light even for accustomed eye. Human sight could reach no farther than ten or twenty steps, that’s why people seemed to appear out of thin air and vanish in it. But there was a good side too: the invisibility of walls made the world look endless.

As far as he understood, the earth is cracking continuously, like a ball of clay in the hot sun: old cracks get deeper and new ones emerge. The caves are huge, and new ones are added. Once the nomads in their roaming came back to some old caves after three thousand years and could not recognize them: the caves were three times that broad, their walls had long cracks opening into strange spaces, where invisible water splashed and strange animals roared,

On the second day Thomas, looking around suspiciously, whispered to Oleg. “Sir wonderer, it’s a bad place… These people are wizards!”

“What’s happened?”

“I managed to approach a wall… and there I saw a thing that made my hair stand on end! An old man came out of solid stone, walked a bit along a stream and, following it, went into a stone wall again!”

“Couldn’t it seem to you?” Oleg asked anxiously.

“I’m no fool, sir wonderer! I crossed myself at once, then also said a prayer… as far as I could remember the words. But the old man did not vanish. Moreover, I touched his footprints on the sand and I can stake my life that he’s no older than forty-eight, a bit lame, has joints in his left leg aching…”

“I believe you!” Oleg interrupted hastily. “I forgot how skillful warrior you are, sir knight. That’s a difference… If this is the weapon Agathyrs prepared, they can be dangerous enemies. And what if they have something more?”

On the next day, Ostap came for them, examined both critically and told to follow him. They went along the wall. Oleg understood that the rest of the young sorcerers were dispersed ahead on their way to prevent common people from seeing the strangers. Let them live in happy ignorance of another world.

Ostap let the guests into a small cave and stopped in the narrow entrance, blocking it. Three people in white robes were waiting in. All had the same silvery-grey hair falling on their shoulders, so it took Thomas some time to see that only two of the old sorcerers were men, while the third was an ancient crone. Her face, covered with small wrinkles, like a baked apple, was as colorless as the faces of all Agathyrsians. She had alert, unfriendly eyes.

Two old men exchanged glances. One made the guests a gesture to sit down. “My name is Boryan, this is my brother Boris and my sister Borunia. We are children to Boreas and grandchildren to Bor. We are the eldest sorcerers of the tribe…”

“And where’s the son of Agathyrs?” Oleg interrupted. “I’d like to see him. His name is Taurus, isn’t it?”

The old men exchanged glances again. “How do you know his name?” Borunia asked harshly.

Oleg paused, looked at the shimmering stones in the walls of the cave. “Of all the sons of Agathyrs, Taurus was the only thinker. The rest were warriors who despised him. They only wanted to gallop across the steppes on fast horses, to chase a deer or, which was even better, to clash face to face with enemy in a mortal combat…”

The crone watched him with disbelief. Boris gave a cough. “Why do you need Taurus?” he asked with mistrust. “He is too old to be disturbed. He is with the tribe, while we here are only a vanguard.”

They looked with expectation. Thomas also kept his eyes on the wonderer. Oleg smiled, lifted his hands. “I would like to see him. And I’m sure he shall be glad to see me!”

After a long pause, Boris said warily, “You speak as Agathyrs spoke, as his sons spoke, as Taurus speaks still. Now this is the sacred language of sorcerers. The small folk, and the princes too, speak differently. How do you know this tongue?”

Oleg grinned, pointed at Thomas with his eyes. “You could have guessed already.” He sounded almost merry.

The three sorcerers gasped and goggled their eyes at him.

Oleg waved his hand, his face darkened, his voice turned sad. “You are right about not coming above. Blood runs in rivers there. People kill each other so fiercely that the most savage wolfs and hyenas look innocent lambs against them! Whole tribes are butchered, with women and children. Nations fight nations, tribes fight tribes, clans fight clans, families fight families, brother fights brother. Even a single man fights himself to the bitter end, as he has lost sight of Truth and Falsehood!”

The three of them were silent, their eyes attentive. The strangers had too much mystery in them, and sorcerers are the ones who can watch and listen, while hasty decisions belong to green youth.

“Probably,” Oleg told them very sadly, “gods keep you here as seeds. People above may all destroy each other. It seems likely to happen. Then you will come to populate the upper spaces with kind, peaceful people. You are far cry from the beasts who had once run into these caves to escape other beasts, even more savage…”

The crone squirmed with discontent. “We have never been beasts!” she interrupted peevishly.

Oleg shook his head, his eyes full of sympathy. “You have been them. What shame in it? You should be proud of your having turned humans from beasts! Sadly, it’s usually other way round… And you left childish pugnacity to children.”

He glanced slantwise at Thomas, and the three sorcerers followed his sight. Thomas sat on a broken fragment of rock. Arrogant and haughty, he looked solemnly over the heads of elders. He was manly and handsome, a head taller than the sorcerers and twice as broad in shoulders as any of them, his chest broad and prominent, while his belly as flat as a bug’s, in bolster-like muscle.

Boris sighed, cast a reproachful look at Oleg. “But you are not a pugnacious beast, are you?”

“I’m a sorcerer,” Oleg reminded. “But the world is not all of sorcerers.”

They were silent for a while, immersed in their thoughts. Oleg watched their clean mild faces with sorrow. Since the Great Exodus, unknown to the tribe, there were no wars against each other. Agathyrsians had conflicts and murders of jealousy or envy but no bloody battles of two human parties. They had too much of the exhausting war with underground monsters to think about killing each other in addition. No place above for their sort. Even sparrows will dominate them.

Suddenly Boris flinched, as though woken up rudely, asked hastily, “Do you want to return above?”

“I must,” Oleg replied sadly. “While one plows, another has to fight. The world is still cruel.”

Boris looked aside at Borunia. She reared up, her eyes blazed. “We can’t let you go! People above should not know of our tribe. What if the cruel upper nations came rushing here? Everything will perish. You are right: we forgot war long ago. Though we have some… But one cannot spend all their life hiding. And we have no skill in killing people.”

Oleg alerted. Thomas reached, involuntarily, for his absent bag. “People above are violent,” Oleg replied carefully, thorough in his choice of words. “But no one shall come here. They are afraid of darkness, even as adults. Scared of dark barns, of night forests… And they have no reason to come here as there are many rich lands above! You are only rich with your wisdom, but it is not a thing to be carried away in bags. You have none of things valued by conquerors.”

Thomas watched the senile sorcerers with pity. All countries above are open to plunder. What madman would prefer entering these creepy caves to rob beggars of their copper coins?

The five of them were sitting in silence, even Thomas made hardly a move. The air in the cave was thick and heavy. It made Thomas feel relaxed and sleepy, like in the warm water.

Oleg kept an alert eye on the faces of sorcerers. He handed his bag to Boris. “You are the eldest one here, wise man. Please help me to crack this nut.”

“A nut?” Boris said in perplexity, without touching the bag. “You have a copper cup there. It was forged seven thousand years ago. As large as a fist, some Aramaic writing along its lip, its stem a bit crumpled…”

With a sigh, Boris took the bag, felt the cup through the thick fabric. Thomas watched him with great respect. The elder listened, then his head jerked up, he cast a sharp look in Oleg’s eyes. Oleg nodded. The old sorcerer, keeping an intent eye on him, put his hand into the bag, found the cup by feeling, and stiffened.

Boryan and Borunia glanced at their elder brother with anxiety: his face was too strange. They also looked askew at fascinated Thomas who had even rose a bit to look into the bag.

“I feel strange power,” Boris spoke very slowly. His face was otherworldly, as though his eyes were reaching far behind the stone walls. “This cup contains great power… but I cannot understand it.”

“How great?” Oleg asked tensely.

Boris still had a vacant look, his voice sounded remote. “It is hard for a mortal man to judge. And we, though Great Sorcerers, are just mortals… Taurus would have put it better. He has the blood of gods… And Agathyrs the Immortal would have told even more of it…”

Oleg heaved a sigh. Thomas shot a quick glance in his dark face and understood that Agathyrs would have said nothing too. And if Agathyrs told it, he, Oleg the wonderer, would have told the same before.

Suddenly Boris’s eyes opened wide. His hand in the bag began to twitch, as though trying to clasp the cup around. His eyes, full of infinite astonishment, were fixed at Oleg. The wonderer gave a reluctant nod of agreement with something important that the old sorcerer got to know due to the Holy Grail. With the next nod, Oleg pointed at Thomas’s mighty figure, then shook his head.

With obvious reluctance, Boris took his hand out, handed the bag back to Oleg who, in turn, gave it to Thomas.

“The Secret Seven, our mortal enemies, made a real hunt for this cup,” Oleg told Boris insistently. “It is a miracle we still have it. But they have never come themselves — only their servants! Why? What value they see in it?”

Boris chewed his flabby colorless lips. “Why won’t you look in the future yourself, the Wise?” he asked suddenly.

Oleg glanced askew at Thomas who was adjusting the cup carefully in the depth of the bag, replied hastily, “All the land we crossed is enclosed with invisible fence. When I got two score steps away from the cup, the screen remained. And a longer distance away… Either no time for it or too dangerous. When I parted with the cup last time, I could allow no look in the future — we were too busy saving our skins!”

Borunia, after being silent for a long while, spoke in an angry, shrewish voice. “These caves are impenetrable to the power of Secret Seven!”

In the face of Boryan, they could see anxious doubt clearly.

“I don’t think they know anything of the nation of Agathyrs,” Oleg comforted them, “the brother of Scyth. When you come out in due time, it shall be a disaster to them!”

Thomas shifted his gaze between the sorcerers and his friend. At last, he dared to break the silence with his strong manly voice that clanged with steel, as though a huge hammer beating on a cooling blade. “Is that prophecy about you?.. A mighty nation come from the North… Gog and Magog… Is that you?”

They gave no reply, rigid and immersed in something unknown to Thomas. Some mysterious thing retained by ancient nations who had no bless of communion with the faith of Christ.

Ostap emerged near the cave entrance several times, shot anxious glances. Nazar and Taras came and brought pieces of strange meat, very fragrant. Thomas looked at it with hungry eyes but refused firmly: one of the young sorcerers had explained him before that was the meat of frog animal. Thomas hardly kept from vomiting. After that, all the three days long, he refused to eat the meat of frogs, despite those cave frogs were as large as camels and attacked people.

A jug of mountain mead was put before Thomas. They had dinner. Then Boris looked silently at his siblings, they nodded sulkily in turn. The eldest sorcerer told the guests sadly, “Our young will take you above.”

Chapter 32

They climbed up sheer walls, squeezed themselves into narrow cracks, crawled by endless winding burrows, scraping their sides and backs. Every time they fell, they were caught by small but strong hands of young sorcerers. The third of them, Nazar, carried the knight’s clanging armor in his bag and had the hilts of huge swords, the bow and arrows jutting out strangely over his shoulders.

Looking at the sorcerers, Thomas suspected they could easily get above straight through the rocks if not the need to pull their guests along. Once he even spotted, out of the corner of his eye, that Ostap’s shoulder came in touch with the protruding sharp stone edge but the young sorcerer proceeded with no hint of stagger: as though it were no solid stone but a cloud of smoke. Then Taras whispered something to him angrily, pointing at Thomas and Oleg with his eyes. Tired Ostap gave his excuses. Thomas pretended to see and hear nothing.

Long before the surface, they felt fresh smells. The tinkles of water, which often crossed their way, were growing colder until they turned icy cold. Smirking Oleg explained stunned Thomas that the deeper into the earth is the warmer, so Agathyrsians knew neither winter nor cold autumn for several thousand years — it was always warm summer in their middle caves. If one gets deeper, he’d have to walk across scorching deserts, on hot stones. Deeper in, the walls are burning hot and the air as boiling as within a stove. It smells of burning, with even more torrid heat coming from below. Probably that’s where the Hell, of which Christians tell so many terrible things, lies? Oleg decided to find it out some time later. When there will be no more dragons, giants, and stolen princesses on earth.

Thomas glanced back. “We need to memorize the way. Hell, you say?”

“Why would you need it?” Oleg was surprised. “You have a place in heaven! On a cloud, with harp in hands.”

“And you?” Thomas cried with insult. “How can I sit on the cloud while you sit in a pot of boiling tar? May all feathers on my wings burn, but I will come to rescue my sworn brother!” He kept glancing back to memorize the way to Hell. His face was solemn and tragic. He was already planning that journey in his mind, checking his equipment.

They felt currents of air and, finally, saw the light ahead. The sorcerers tied thick black cloths over their faces but kept moving with confidence, with no touch to walls. Thomas started screwing up, as he saw the breach ahead. They made the last steps on their bellies, scratching their knees and elbows.

Thomas gasped, as he saw the trees and old stubs flooded with bright light. It was night, the scatter of stones from where they came out was shielded by thick branches, which whispered anxiously, but the dark sky seemed as bright as day!

Ostap was the only one to come out on the surface, while Taras and Nazar stayed in. Ostap tossed the bag down on the ground, it gave a protesting tinkle. He hurried to take off the sword baldrics, the bow, and the quiver. His voice sounded muffled through the thick black cloth. “Even this light is too bright for us!.. Eyes are watering. We leave. We adjure you again: tell no one about us!”

Oleg embraced him. Thomas shook his hand and assured, “Good sires, I’d never betray people who saved my life!”

Standing in the crevice, Ostap raised his hand in farewell and vanished. Oleg and Thomas stayed in the shining night forest. Puffing with strain, Thomas climbed hastily into his iron armor, clasped the steel plates on legs and arms. At last, he put on his gauntlets, clenched and unclenched his fingers happily. His steel fists looked menacing.

“No wink of sleep,” Oleg warned. He checked his bow and went fingering his arrows critically. “It’s night. A moonless one! May the sun not blind us when it comes out!” He examined the trees thoroughly, squatted to touch the last year’s leaves on the ground, the empty shells of acorns.

Suddenly Thomas clapped a hand to his forehead. “Sir wonderer!.. We’ve spend much time there. I’m afraid I’ll have to ride more than one horse to death to get on the bank of Don by Saint Boromir’s Day!”

Oleg pecked at the earth silently, trying his sword grip, then landed a test blow on a young tree. Being cut down slantwise, it stuck into the dark ground near them, fell across the glade, its branches rustling anxiously. “I’d like to know where we are,” he said thoughtfully. “To see the stars at least…”

“What do you mean?” Thomas was surprised.

“Anyway, it’s not the place where they found us,” Oleg explained politely. “I recall them carrying us… Agathyrsians are nomads. They roam in their caves. Where have they taken us for those two weeks we spent unconscious? That’s a mystery!”

Thomas looked stunned. He sank down helplessly on a rotten log. “What? They could have taken us back?”

“In the morning we can find ourselves at the walls of Jerusalem. Or in those ruins where Gorvel socked you on head… Or even in China.”

“Where’s that?” Thomas inquired gloomily. His eyes had an evil glitter.

“Sir Thomas,” Oleg reminded, “they saved us from inevitable death! Agathyrsians are the only people who still remember how to heal such ‘grass-eaters’ as we. And being taken to travel on their nomadic ways is a sign of trust.”

Thomas squirmed restlessly, kept standing up and sitting down again. At last, he declared resolutely, “Sir wonderer! We need to go, or I’ll burst with anxiety.”

“Which way?”

“Any. Just to get moving.”

“Then north,” Oleg decided. “Judging by these trees, we are still in Europe.”

Thomas, with all his concern and fear to get late to the bank of Don, noticed strange things about the forest. It was solemn and silent, as all the animals and birds were sleeping, and the faint light that came down through clouds and branches was enough for his eyes, as they were accustomed to dark. Thomas knew he would never see a night forest that way again: only a dark place where one can make no step without bumping into a tree or falling into a pit.

Long before the sunrise, their eyes started to water with the dazzling light. The edge of the earth was only lit a bit, the bright disk only about to come out, but the forest looked flooded with liquid sun. Then everything went bloody red. Thomas grasped that morning rays had set clouds on red fire. He started to shield his eyes with palm. The wonderer, screwing up at his side, comforted that Agathyrsians had led them out in dense woods deliberately: the tent of thick branches would not let the sunlight in. Moreover, the day promised to be dull, and later their eyes would get accustomed.

Once they understood the light would not grew any brighter, they took the risk of crossing a glade. The wonderer fingered his charms anxiously, flinched often, hunched in fright. Thomas glanced over, seized the sword hilt, but the forest was strangely quiet. No birds squealing in their nests, though they should be awake by that time.

“Hurry, Sir Thomas,” Oleg said nervously, all of a sudden.

He almost ran deep into the truly wild wood. Thomas stumbled over logs, got stuck in prickly shrubs, his head hit against low thick branches. The wonderer seemed to be barging into the very thickets deliberately, like a madman. He climbed over the rows of logs, plunged under hanging trees, which were likely to collapse of a careless blow, jumped over the pits of black water that looked strangely still, like set tar. Thomas had his bag with the cup and even his sword baldric stuck in the twigs continually. As he ran, his head bumped against obstacles with such a force that he saw stars flying out of either his iron helmet or his eyes.

“The forest is too strange!” Oleg said nervously on the go, to explain his hurry. “I see no animal tracks, hear no birds, no gnats…”

“I don’t miss gnats at all,” Thomas said through gritted teeth.

“And no frogs…”

“Neither I miss frogs. Though they should be, you are right… They are everywhere. They are said to live even in Heaven: big green frogs…”

“Sorcerers say they also live in our paradise. I didn’t see it with own eyes, but why should heaven be better than paradise?”

Thomas gasped of that shameless blasphemy, came running into a thick trunk and was thrown under a rotten log that fell down on him with gloat, powdering his face with decay, thick fat worms, sticking up his eyes with mold. Thomas grasped he should not argue. This is ancient, Pagan forest, after all. And frogs not always live in bogs: plenty of them inhabit woods and grass. There also are small frogs dwelling on trees, jumping on branches. And Heaven has beautiful green shrubs. Frogs can live in them…

Again, he got such a strike that made all his steel ring. Oleg looked back gloomily but did not hurry up, his eyes anxious. Thomas listened: the forest was absolutely silent, as though it were winter night, not midsummer. However, even in winter one can hear a clatter of claws on the wood, a caw of crow.

“I’m afraid we’ll know all of it soon,” Oleg said slowly.

“And till that time we’ll get on without gnats and frogs,” Thomas replied with a forced fun, as though he had to cheer up his tired soldiers before the storm of Jerusalem. “One should find good in everything, sir wonderer!”

For a long time, they forced their way through thickets, then there were more glades on the way. Suddenly, all shrubs vanished. Only dead black trees stuck out of the bare ground. Few were covered with green moss, the rest were dry or rotting slowly, dropping their heavy twigs. The ground was so dry that it rang under their feet. The last year’s leaves had gone, and the glades were crossed with deep clefts.

They came out in the broad field bounded by the same black forest far ahead. Thomas alerted at once, put his hand on the sword hilt. Ahead, there were huge white stones that looked like picked skeletons of strange animals. The tallest ones were almost at height with his shoulders. Those protruding blocks seemed to have been sinking into the ground for the thickness of ant’s feeler with each century. Judging by the smoothed edges of stones, that had once been the roof of a high watchtower.

“A trouble,” Oleg said drearily. “As though we had little of it before!”

Thomas lowered his visor, tugged his sword in the sheath and turned into a position more convenient to draw it out immediately. His eyes in narrow slit glimmered like blue ice, his breath burst out quickly. The knight was not that light-hearted as he pretended to be.

They passed the stone-studded field with nothing to report, got deep into the forest again. Trees were giant there, their green branches entangled very high above. When they were deep in it, Thomas brightened up, pointed at a huge anthill. Big red ants were dragging caterpillars, bugs, and grasshoppers to it from everywhere. Soon after, they heard first birds, caught a glimpse of red squirrel backs among the green branches. Thomas sighed with relief, took his hand off the sword hilt.

Oleg, on the contrary, was frowning more and more often, peering at the dark trunks, following squirrels with intent anxious eyes. Suddenly he snatched the bow from his back, put an arrow on.

There was a glimpse of marten on the branch ahead. It ran over the road, lay down on the thick twig, arching its back, and peered at the men. Oleg raised his bow slowly, aimed. Thomas was sure the marten would flee, as it was in no more than twenty steps from them, but the lithe animal only made a higher arch of its back. Its eyes had a creepy sparkle of mica crystals.

There was a dry click of bow string. Thomas saw clearly that the sharp arrow hit the marten’s neck with force. The animal lurched but only dug its sharp claws deeper into the branch. Eyes blazed up like coals, jaws opened menacingly, showing white fangs, too long for such a small creature. The rebounded arrow shook several leaves off, fell down on the road ahead.

Thomas froze with fear, while the dark-faced wonderer walked on, picked the arrow up silently. When they made about hundred steps, Thomas glanced over in fright. The marten still lay on the branch, its back a gracious arch, and followed them with narrowed malicious eyes.

Suddenly Oleg raised his bow again, aimed quickly, and shot. The marten bared its teeth, as the arrow hit on its side. That time, the animal was thrown up. Its squealed with fear, flew down, trying to catch at some leaves with sharp claws. The quiver of branches marked its fall, but the marten did not fell down on the ground: it seemed to vanish in the greenery.

Thomas said nothing, afraid that his manly voice accustomed to giving commands and calling for storm may quaver with fear.

They walked through the forest all the day long, with three stops for rest, drained the jug of mountain mead given to them for the road, ate the slices of roast meat. Thomas turned his nose away from it at first, but the wonderer shot nothing in the forest. When Thomas’s belly gave a rumbling protest, he took the smallest slice reluctantly, started a conversation about wonders, lest he see the filth he had to chew. He only came to his senses at the end of the meal, after he finished the last slice. The wonderer had stopped eating long before: he took the iron head off his longest arrow and put a silver one, of a flattened coin, instead.

By the coming of night, their eyes got accustomed. Thomas said nothing against the fire, even fetched the twigs for it. The wonderer, for some strange reason, came dragging a stump, put his cloak on it, placed his boots filled with grass nearby, and slipped into the dark silently. Thomas lay down on the other side of the effigy, but his fear drove away his sleep. He did not even dare to stir.

At midnight, Thomas heard heavy steps far behind the trees. It seemed to be an oak walking to their fire through green saplings. The knight screwed up, then dared to open one eye a bit.

A giant figure, twice as tall as a man, emerged in the circle of reddish light. The stranger was massive, clad in black fur. His eyes on the hairy face had strange glitter, and when he opened his mouth, as red as a burning stove, there was a flash of pointed white teeth. “Take that for yesterday!”

With a terrible force, he brought his giant club, made of a whole tree, on the cloaked stump. It cracked, sank into the earth with a crash. Thomas lay quivering all over, but the stranger paid no attention to him.

“Take that for today!” a malevolent voice thundered suddenly in the dark.

The giant turned at it. In the reddish firelight, there was a brief flash over the glade. The stranger gave a sudden terrible roar of no threat but pain and fear: a white feather was stuck in its chest, as the arrow had gone deep into

Thomas held his ears involuntarily, though this move gave him out just before the stranger’s eyes. He couldn’t bear hearing that scary roar full of deathly terror.

The giant dropped his club, reeling, his monstrously broad hands gripped the injured place. The club, as large as a log, rolled up to Thomas. The giant turned round, staggered into the dark shrubs. The night hid him from sight at once, but for a long time Thomas kept hearing his heavy uneven steps. Trees shuddered, twigs cracked, then the earth was shaken with a sudden heavy blow, as though a tree collapsed.

Oleg came out from the dark, draw a circle on the ground around Thomas and himself, whispered and spat for a while. “Why not you sleep?” he said with a jaw-rending yawn. “The day was hard. Hope tomorrow is better. Get to sleep!” He lay down by the fire, got snoring almost at once.

Thomas lay awake for a long time, flinched, peered at the branches protruding from the dark. He heard squeaks outside the lit circle, a clatter of small claws on wood. A bright blue feather came down, swaying in the warmed air, like a boat in the Golden Bay. Suddenly its edges blazed up with small flames, it sank closer to the fire. A strong push of heat made it fly up and vanish.

Thomas shivered, tucked his legs up when they got too close to the border of light. He seemed to see hairy paws, eager to grab him and drag deep into the woods… or even under the roots of giant trees, into those dark gaping holes that breathed out deathlike cold. Once there was a pat on his cheek. Thomas jumped up with a mad shriek but the wonderer did not awake. It were two small panting ants who carried a crumble of cave animal’s meat. It was caught and stuck in times, but the brave insects kept dragging it, fearlessly ignorant of giants, werewolves, and the cowardly knight. Shamed Thomas sat up closer to the fire, pulled his sword out and put on his knees. The wonderer slept with his knees tucked up. A Pagan. Nothing matters to him.

In a strange forest, someone must stay on watch, Thomas told himself resolutely. The bravest warriors are the first to guard the sleep of others, and we have just one warrior here! The wonderer takes up arms only in case of need, as though his real Truth can be obtained by unarmed man. And in such an unpleasant place as this forest is, it’s better to have on watch no plain warrior but a brave knight.

The sword was shiny and, due to the Agathyrsians, sharp enough to cut apart a single hair. Thomas, unsure what other thing to take up, stripped off his shabby belt, unpicked the worn-out lining and started to line a new one of the boar skin, thick and sturdy. Sir wonderer kept pestering him with his workshyness, while he, Thomas Malton of Gisland, a noble knight, cared of his warhorse himself, cleaned and washed him. Though it’s actually a job for squires and servants. In their journey, Thomas was the one to gather brushwood for the wire, fetch water from the river, boil the porridge, and often the one to do cooking…

He heard the wonderer’s mocking voice behind: a bit louder than it used to be and too resonant, as though Oleg shouted from inside a hollow. “Whom the belt for?”

“The devil,” Thomas replied with a start. He was annoyed with himself being frightened by that sudden voice, and the question was stupid indeed: the wonderer had no need of new belt, as his own one could endure a mountain or the forest giant’s club hung on it.

He looked up and flinched. The wonderer was asleep, rolled up into a ball, and the voice came from somewhere to the left… Thomas turned hastily, caught a glimpse of huge green back moving away, but the stranger vanished in the dark so swiftly that Thomas could not be sure whether he saw him or that was just a blow of night wind stirring the branches.

Starting at every rustle, he bent over the belt, trying to keep his hand as close to the sword hilt as possible. When it began to grew lighter over the trees, the wonderer snuffled uneasily, crawled up to the fire in his sleep. Thomas tossed the last twig into the fire: the air at dawn is the coldest. As the wonderer felt the warmth, he moved away, without waking up.

The twig burnt down. Thomas patted Oleg by shoulder. “Sir wonderer!”

Oleg woke up, his clear green eyes looked at Thomas in perplexity. He sat up at once, stretched himself sweetly, which gave his bones a crunch, yawned with a creepy howl, like a forest animal. “You are right, Sir Thomas. We must go! Have you slept?”

“I was on the watch,” Thomas replied proudly, nodded at the bare sword that was still across his knees, showed the belt. “You see, I can do things myself.”

Oleg turned his head. “That’s a surprise, Sir Thomas… If not your unhappy lot to be born a noble knight, you could make a good tanner!”

Thomas forced a smile, but the next moment the wonderer turned solemn, his hand seized the bow. Thomas heard twigs crackle. A strange man came out from behind an oak (if that was a man): a head taller than Oleg and Thomas, thrice as broad in shoulders. All covered with grey-green bone plates, he looked like an old, mossy giant lizard. “Good morn,” he roared menacingly. “Give what thee swore!”

Oleg drew his bow. “Who are you?” he asked quickly.

“Devil of woods!” the stranger bellowed in a creepy thick voice. “Leave it. The arrow of thee no harm to my skin. Even headed with silver!”

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas said hastily, writhing with embarrassment, “lower your arrow. He’s right… I promised the belt to him.”

He hurled the belt, the green stranger caught it deftly in the air. He was impossibly quick, like a nimble lizard, but there seemed to be tight muscle under his thick bony shell. He examined the belt carefully with his unblinking snake eyes, pulled it, then tried to clasp around. Thomas had a secret hope it would not fit: the master of night forest was thrice as broad as the knight, but Thomas had made some spare holes during his watch by the fire.

The devil sucked his scaly stomach in, pulled the catch of the belt, and the pin got into the very last hole. The devil puffed his belly up — the belt crunched but endured. The devil burst with hoarse resonant laughter that sounded like stone blocks rubbed against each other. “Good! I take it.” He turned round and went away. Soon the snapping of twigs died down.

The wonderer followed him with astonished eyes, as large as a surprised owl’s, his jaw dropped to the waist. “What about your intolerance, faith in Christ, hate for infidels?.. Did your principles give a crack?”

Thomas replied angrily, as he found himself in an awkward situation. “Sir wonderer, I will never give up my principles! I simply can’t do that! But that toad of woods caught me in a word, and the knightly word is all that matters. Even if given to mortal enemy! Haven’t I concluded a truce with Saracen relying on the word of honor only? I never broke it, neither did they!”

Oleg took the bowstring off, put his bow into the quiver of arrows, jumped up his feet. “We must go. Forgive me, I was wrong. One should keep his word even with enemies. And then he may see they are no enemies at all…”

They went through the forest. The light grew even brighter, their eyes ached bitterly, but Oleg was glad they could stand the light of the sun that was above trees. The next day the direct sunlight would not blind them if they come in it.

“What forest is that?” Thomas asked. “Do you know where we are?”

“The Dark Woods. The only good thing is that no one would look for us here. Even the Secret Seven.”

“Why?”

“No one has ever come out of it alive,” Oleg comforted him. With disgust, he rounded a tangle of snakes intertwined in their mating rite, went through the thickets: as passionless and immersed in his thoughts of eternal verities as Thomas knew him to be almost all the time.

It was hard to walk in woods without roads. Thomas got tired soon, as he had to carry Burlan’s knightly armor on while climbing the logs, which the wonderer could simply jump over, and forcing his way through prickly thickets. The knight started to think of having a rest when suddenly they heard a crackle of twigs, shouts and screams ahead. The noise was coming on them quickly. Thomas lowered his visor abruptly, his hand dropped on the sword hilt.

The shrubs ahead opened like waves, a snorting horse bustled out. A big man in the saddle, in rags of hunting costume, was clinging convulsively at its mane, as the reins had been torn away. Something was strange about his face. Thomas did not get at once why it made him feel creepy all over. As the rider dashed by, Thomas saw a smooth prominent surface in place of his face, as though all its features were rubbed away by the head wind, in the same way it rubs the sharp edges of rocks for thousands of years, turning them into rounded boulders.

The rider darted past and across the glade. Thomas felt an irrepressible fit of sickness. The rider had his face on the back of head. That might have been an effect of the head wind that kept blowing on him for the third century in row or a part of his punishment: to see all the terror chasing him at heels.

Some strange horrible animals, huge, shaggy, and scaly, broke out of the shrubs onto the glade. Heavy blocks of darkness, with only a glitter of sharp fangs, claws, thorns, and combs, they rushed after the madly galloping horse, all but snapping at its legs. The air was rent with roar, screech, barking, a clatter of cloven hooves. All of them dashed across the glade, then into bushes. For a while, there was a clatter of hooves, a squeal dying away.

Thomas shrugged with a shiver, drew his sword in with a thud. “I didn’t think they’d chase him that far!”

“Who was it?” Oleg asked with surprise. “You know him?”

Thomas waved away carelessly. “The Wild Hunter! He’s known to everyone.”

He walked on silently, sure that his explanation was full. He even gave a start when Oleg said warily, “Sir Thomas… Definitely, I realize what a trifle it is, known to everyone on earth, even the sheiks of deserts, the children of mountains and steppes, even to Burkinians, but you know I happened to spend some time in woods… er… in the cave. I’m ashamed to confess it but I’ve missed some events of world importance. The Wild Hunter… who is he?”

Thomas gave the wonderer a surprised look. The Agathyrsians called him Wise, once even the Wise, but if he didn’t know such a famous event… er… “He was a highborn lord,” Thomas explained patiently. “Had a beautiful wife, a healthy child, a fine castle, and faithful vassals. But he had too much love for hunting…”

“Many men have it.”

“But he, in excitement of it, would trample down the crops of peasants, offend the weak. Once he even killed an old man whom he bumped into while chasing a deer… For that, the hunter was doomed to turn into prey himself and be chased forever by a pack of demons. That’s how he keeps galloping for the third century already. My grandsire told me of him.”

“Will his torments last long?” Oleg asked with sympathy. “Punishments don’t last forever, do they?”

“The torments of sinners in Hell last forever,” Thomas claimed adamantly.

“You have a cruel god,” Oleg reproached. “And we Rodians have no hell at all.”

“That’s why you are so shameless! Each takes two wives!”

“Not each, really. It does not befit some men to have two wives, as they can take ten or twenty. Prince Vladimir, for instance, had nine hundred wives and thousand concubines. And he was the prince who brought your Christianity to our Rus’.”[20]

For a long time, Thomas walked silently, confused by such a man as a guide in Christ’s faith, then said, without much confidence, “Yes, that’s possible in your…”

“Why only ours? King Solomon had thousand wives.”

“Then he is in Hell too,” Thomas declared firmly. “All violators go to Hell!”

“Your god looks like a wild nomad to me,” Oleg said. “He enjoys throwing live people into pots of boiling tar, burning them with red-hot iron, skinning or stretching on the rack…”

Thomas was crushing through the thickets stubbornly. He even outran Oleg, to avoid discussing godly matters with that Pagan. “I can’t get one thing… Are we already in Britain?” he asked with concern.

“The Wild Hunter was Angle?”

“He was,” Thomas said through gritted teeth, “but he could be a Scyth as well, couldn’t he? Or a Ross. You may say one could gallop really far for three hundred years. But how did he cross the sea?”

“What if he galloped by land?” Oleg supposed. “Around?”

“Britain is all surrounded by water, sir wonderer!.. However, he could come from Old Angles who stayed on the continent while the rest of the tribe moved to British Isles.” He fell silent, as he stopped near a big block of black basalt that resembled a figure of sitting man. With good will, one could even see his shield and sword.

Silently, Thomas unsheathed his sword, saluted, flung it back into the scabbard with a thud. The knight’s face was grim as a thundercloud, his eyes, blue like wild flowers, went dark.

Oleg shifted his gaze to the knight. “Your kin?”

“Garald,” Thomas replied significantly.

“Ah, just a familiar…”

“Garald,” Thomas said again in a raised voice. He watched Oleg with some annoyance. “A great warrior! Didn’t you in Ross hear of him?”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Holy Virgin! How do you live in this wide world?”

“Getting by,” Oleg sighed hypocritically. “Was he an Angle too?”

“Of pure Anglic blood! Once he led all of his hosts to meet the enemy’s force that landed on our shore. That was the greatest battle. The foes were utterly defeated, but the sons of Garald, his brothers, and even his beloved old father perished in that fighting. Garald was the only one who got no scratch, though he fought ahead of his warriors… He felt so bitter while walking across the endless field all covered with dead bodies that he sat down on a stump, froze in his brooding, and then turned stone!”

They walked, leaving the rock behind. “That battle must have been long ago,”

Oleg said respectfully. “All corpses picked by crows. But why did they fight in wild woods?”

“They fought in a field,” Thomas replied with vexation. “The forest grew up later.”

Oleg cast a glance over the hundred-year-old oaks they passed by, mighty and branchy, over innocent flowers and poisonous grass that killed cattle and turned the soil barren. “I can understand,” he said cautiously, “how the Wild Hunter could get here and why the devil of woods spoke the Old Anglic dialect… But Garald? Are you sure his battle took place in your new Anglandia? In Britain, I mean?”

Thomas glanced at him askew with a fiery eye, like angry horse, waiting for a catch.

“However,” Oleg supposed, “if there was the great migration of tribes and peoples that crushed the old empires of Rome, then our gods, demons, spirits, and ghosts could also move somewhere… The flow of time changes even the concepts of good and evil! And our gods travel from country to country, from nation to nation, change themselves on that way… I recall my amazement when I encountered the Firebird of ours at the other end of the world, in a country of strange people with dark brown skin!

“The Firebirds turned out to be native to that land, have nests there, and ours was just a stupid one with passion for far transmigration. It got acclimated in our country: a fun to shine with its southern feathers at the snowy North…”

They were separated by a huge log, then walked on both sides of a mighty oak. Thomas could not hear the wonderer’s words but glanced at his side with interest. Suddenly Oleg yelled, pointed with hand. In perplexity, Thomas turned his head there — and his blood ran cold for a moment: a boar of colossal size, with his head lowered menacingly, was rushing on him!

He felt an acute regret that he had no lance with him, raised his hand hastily to the sword hilt. The boar was flying like a catapulted rock, his small red eyes blazed with savage fury, scary glittering fangs were as large as elephant tusks!

Thomas planted his feet wider apart, pulled out the sword. The boar came down on him like a collapsing rock. Thomas felt acute pain, struck forcefully against the hard ground.

There was a menacing roar and cursing aside. Thomas had time to turn on his side before a violent blow came on his back. He flew up, breaking branches, saw the goggled eyes of a squirrel and her young, turned in the air and fell down back on the glade heavily, gave a howl of pain.

The wonderer was yelling in two steps. Thomas turned with effort. He felt maimed and bleeding. A heavy carcass fell down on him, splashing with hot blood, twitching and kicking, his armor screeched. Then the carcass was moved away, he heard the wonderer’s angry voice asking, “Are you alive?”

Thomas struggled a bit up on his elbow. The boar lay in two steps, in a pool of blood. He was all but slashed in two, with the second deep wound across his skull where the sword broke it. “Thank you, sir wonderer,” Thomas said emotionally.

The wonderer stood over him, pale with rage, the blooded sword shaking in hands, his eyes blazing with fury. “Why stand on his way, you fool? No space to jump?”

“Sir wonderer!” Thomas said with dignity. “The boar was running straight on me! If I jumped aside, wouldn’t that be cowardly?”

The wonderer gasped with rage. “Cowardly?.. What a noble Angle!.. Do you really mind what a boar thinks of you?”

Thomas thought for a while and admitted reluctantly, “Truly I don’t. But the knightly traditions…”

With great effort, he struggled up. For a long time they walked in silence: the wonderer was angry. Thomas tried not to limp, endured the pain of bruises and abrasions. They left the boar carcass behind: no need of meat yet. The wonderer frowned more often, seized his bow.

That was how they went for almost half a day. Gradually, the wonderer softened, started to give brief answers. The knight felt guilty and spoke to him first. The wonderer started to tell of the Dark Forest but stopped in the middle of a sentence. Thomas saw blood rushing back from his face. Oleg turned all ears, even stopped for a moment, then grew even paler and cried hoarsely, “Get your butt in gear! Nothing to save us but our legs… And you, fool, have them broken by boar!”

“Won’t this save?” Thomas asked, clapping on the sword hilt.

“If only it could! I have the same piece of iron on my back.”

“Sir wonderer! If legs were always the rescue, hares would never die!”

Oleg rushed ahead, through shrubs and wind-fallen trees, picking almost no way. Thomas clenched his teeth, ran after him. The forest looked the same, Thomas could see no danger but he’d made enough miles together with the wonderer to trust in his charms and Pagan intuition.

The wonderer darted across the thickets, like a loach. Sometimes he stirred no branch, as though he turned into smoke or had learnt from Agathyrsians to pass through solid things, while Thomas in his steel shell broke through, like a flying rock, paying no hint to prickles and sharp twigs. Oleg often glanced over while running, looked for the knight but Thomas hardly ever dropped behind. In times Oleg got stuck in a tangle of branches but Thomas, though heavier at his run, crushed any obstacle like an enraged rhino. He left behind a broad trodden road covered with broken young trees and branches, ruined anthills.

They were running for ages. For all that time, Thomas heard not a single sound of pursuers, no howl of wolf or other animal, no crackle of twig or small branch behind. Only once a big shadow darted above, but the three floors of branches made a solid screen between the sky and the ground, so that bird, if any bird could be that large, should have seen not a damned thing. When the shadow moved away to where they came running from, Thomas seemed to see that the wonderer livened up a bit, stopped hunching like a hare at sight of kite.

However, the wonderer kept yelling for him not to stop, not to slow his run. The remainders of the mountain mead were blown away, Thomas was flung from one trunk to another, his mouth salty, his body screaming with pain. In addition, the dry ground was replaced by a thick carpet of green moss. His feet kept sinking into the wet champing layer and became as heavy as the stones to tie ships to in a port.

The wonderer urged him on. Through the shroud of muddy sweat, Thomas saw him nearby: Oleg gripped his shoulder, dragged on, yelled, all but hitting him. Thomas dragged his feet along. He wished nothing but to fall down and die in peace, without even wiping the salty sweat off his forehead.

Suddenly his eyes were dazzled by a glaring light. Exhausted, Thomas raised his head, stared in perplexity at the huge dark trunks, especially dark and gloomy because of the bright light shining behind them!

Oleg dragged Thomas up to the edge of the Forest, pushed him forward. Thomas made several steps, squeezed himself between the giant trunks that stood very close there, on the border of Forest, to protect, like a knightly armor, the tender inside of Woods from the scorching breath of endless Steppes.

Chapter 33

There was flat steppe ahead: no end to it, not a single bush nor a tree — only low grass, tough and stunted, that had won the struggle for life in the ruthless light of blazing sun!

Thomas made a step out of the shade of trees, reeled of the heavy torrid heat that came down on him. There were some clouds, as white as lambs, in the blue sky, but they made no obstacle for the scorching sun to burn the ground. At once, he got nasty trickles of sweat running down under his armor.

Oleg glanced over at the Forest with fear. “Let’s go… Forest animals can dart out on the edge.”

Obediently, Thomas limped away from the dark wall of the Forest, though it did not seem that scary anymore.

“Sir Thomas,” the wonderer said reluctantly, “now I know precisely where we are.” His face was depressed.

Thomas got frightened. “Did Agathyrsians take us back?”

“Just the opposite. But… they were going east and let us out on the way. Now we are much closer to Rus’ than to Britain.”

They walked in silence, Oleg kept his hasty pace. Thomas, with his head aching, could hardly get the meaning of his words. “We got closer to my Britain? Or farther from it?”

“Closer to Rus’,” Oleg replied evasively.

“So we’ll have to cross your Rus’? At last I shall see which kingdoms it is clutched between!”

Oleg mended his pace. Thomas could not see his face, wanted to ask more questions, but the enraged sun made his armor red-hot, boiling him in own sweat so that he felt like a crayfish in an iron pot. He dragged his feet along on dry yellow grass, hoping he’d live till the halt.

When the wonderer cried the halt, Thomas fell down, as though the ground was kicked from beneath his feet. After a while, he turned onto his side, stretched his aching legs. As Thomas had a look through the blades of grass, he gave a scream and rose to his knees.

Far ahead, there was a bright gleaming wall… or rather a rampart made of strange orange blocks. The sight of it made Thomas’s heart beat faster. Oleg followed the knight’s sight, pointed in another direction indifferently. There was a similar glittering circle of rampart. It could house a huge castle but Thomas doubted whether it did: all he could see was the tall wall sparkling in the sun.

Oleg gathered some grass blades, thick and knotty, made a fire. Thomas looked with disgust at the two fat lizards that the wonderer had killed by hurling stones. The knight’s hunger made his stomach gripe, but that food was too unchristian!

“Better a small bug than a hungry mug,” Oleg comforted coolly. “Would you prefer to go without food?”

“Give me your frog.”

“No frog. That’s a small crocodile. Do you recall the fare of Agathyrsians? Those were big crocodiles. It’s all the same sort.”

Thomas ate the lizard up with its skin and claws, then took a stone and waylaid two more stupid ones that came out to bask in that mad torrid sun. He ate one of them raw, to show the wonderer how indifferent the inspired warriors of Christ were to carnivore joys. The wonderer also ate his one raw. To please either his beastly Pagan habits or his beastly Pagan gods.

“What land is it?” Thomas asked. He had climbed out of his armor, stripped off, covered his body with clothes to shield from the burning sun. The touch of light breeze was blissful to his body: it was all red, like fresh-boiled meat, with jets of overheated air rising over.

Oleg, with hands behind head, looked in the sky. He had a dry grass blade in his teeth, a confused ladybird crawling along it. “The beginning of Steppes.”

“Steppes… The Wild Field?”

Oleg turned his head a bit, looked sharply, His voice was biting. “You got the skill to foresee?.. It will be called the Wild Field, then the Ruin, but now it’s just Steppes. A pool that keeps — for countless ages, a century after century — splashing out strange nations without number, savage, fierce, and blood-thirsty. They bring death, fire, and ruin everywhere but build nothing. They only live by plunder…”

“Do they?” Thomas doubted. “They have herds, after all. What would they do to the milk, meat, and skins?”

“They create no material culture,” Oleg corrected himself. “Build no cities nor canals, plant no trees, write no books. Should they take a city, they burn it, with all its temples and libraries. They shatter beautiful statues but make none of those. The few city dwellers who survive are taken for captives. And we, Rus’, are the shield between Steppes and Europe!”

“Is your Rus’ against Steppes?”

“Yes. All our life is a struggle against Steppes. A struggle of plowmen against nomads.”

“So… we are going to run into the steppe dwellers?”

“Yes. We are about to enter the lands of Polovtsians — the ones who press on Pechenegs who, in turn, have come to Kiev. But the days of Pechenegs are over. They’ll be crushed between the hammer and the anvil, and Ruses will have an exhausting struggle against Polovtsians… I’m afraid we’ll see their tents soon. But first the numberless herds of their horses… However, first of all comes the swish of their arrows. Polovtsians shoot before they ask any questions.”

Thomas raised his head a bit, looked around. Within scores of miles, the steppes were empty save the strange orange rings. Perching, Thomas saw two more of those gleaming ramparts on the very brink of sight.

Oleg also raised his head. “Had enough rest?” he inquired. “Then climb into your irons. We must go!”

Thomas moaned, crawling on the ground like a squashed turtle. “I’ll memorize it for lifetime and entrust my grandsons: to fear a Rus saying ‘off chance’, ‘and over’, or ‘we must go’!”

They made no more than two score steps when Thomas sniffed, glanced over at the wonderer with doubt. Oleg nodded. In several more steps, the smell grew sharp, strangely invigorating, like a sip of cold water in the heat. Oleg cast attentive glances around. Suddenly he sank to his hands, rubbed his belly against the ground, then turned and squirmed on his back. Thomas goggled his eyes. The wonderer made an inviting gesture. “Sir Thomas, please…”

“What for?”

“We came into the lands of a strange tribe. They only know their kin by smell.”

“Like dogs?” Thomas asked with disbelief. “Why should we care?”

“Dogs mark trees and stones on the borders of their territory, Sir Thomas. For others to know them. A bear on his borders would scratch trees, an elk would strike logs with hooves, and this tribe does it the same way as dogs… You were right about that.”

With disgust, Thomas rubbed himself on the stones sprinkled with gleaming yellow drops. He was glad he had armor on, unlike the wonderer. They moved on, across the steppes, heading for northeast. Far and wide away, there was Rus’, the civilized kingdoms beyond it, including Germany that was but a step from Britain.

On the way, Oleg rubbed twice more on the smelly rocks. Once he found some intact drops in a cavity, he collected them accurately into a flask on his belt. Thomas wrinkled his aristocratic nose but said nothing. During the laborious Crusade, he had seen plenty of things, had been both high and low!

Suddenly they heard a rustle of grass in ten steps, caught a glimpse of something. Oleg did not move an ear, his sword remained on his back, along with the bow and feathered arrows. Thomas relaxed his muscle, started to calm down, but his heart kept pounding very fast, as though it felt a mortal danger.

After two hundreds of steps, Thomas glimpsed, out of the corner of his eye, a moving dark point on the left. Soon he made out that was a killed deer carried by some strange animal in jaws. The deer’s head and legs were dragged on the ground, catching the grass. Once the branchy antlers got caught in a poor bush. The animal yanked the deer up impatiently, it flew up with the bush in antlers, of its white, shamelessly bared roots made a flash in the sun. The animal seemed to be monstrously strong, though three times smaller than the deer. Thomas shivered, started to pull his sword out.

“Antes,” Oleg said without slowing down his pace. “Never mind them. We are protected by spells.”

“Spells?”

“I mean the smell. Do you remember the stones we rubbed on? Let me sprinkle some more on you.” Oleg sprinkled the knight’s gleaming armor with big drops of sharp-smelling liquid, aiming into the slits.

“Which antes?” Thomas asked, stunned. “I’ve never seen…”

“Antes… are just antes. We Ruses are antes too. This is how some foreigners call us, for we are numerous and hard-working.”[21]

Thomas opened his mouth to ask a new question but remained still, his jaw dropped. The deer was dragged across their way… by a giant ant! He looked like an ingot of black iron, glittering in the sunlight, like a shiny knight, armored from the end of his feeler to the least of his claws. His thick jaws were a steel trap of two jaggy sickles, his prominent unblinking eyes looking in a cold and hostile way, his iron legs moving so easily as if he carried no prey at all!

He rushed by, in a score of steps ahead, left an invisible jet of sharp invigorating smell. Thomas followed with dumbfounded eyes the black body that dashed away on its six crooked paws… to the sparkling rampart!

“The ants of Herodotus.”[22] Thomas whispered in enchantment. “I thought ‘the father of history’ fibbed…”

“Fancy that,” Oleg said in surprise. “Have you read Herodotus?”

“They’ll tear us to pieces,” Thomas whispered again. “Our swords… what are they against their armor?”

“Off chance they won’t. What does Herodotus say of it?”

“My tutor was retelling it to me. I can’t recall all of it.”

“Sir Thomas, if we did not run onto this field, we’d have scattered the forest edge with our picked bones! The Dark Forest is not likely to let its prey go that easy.”

Behind them, there was a whole procession of huge ants: as large as wolves, but clad in the most durable armor, with not a smallest slit to stab a dagger into. They were running in wolfish way: one by another, each next one touching his predecessor with long supple feelers. Some jerked their antennae up as they ran, felt the air. The ants paid no heed to Thomas and Oleg. But if we retreat, we’d have to fight our way through this live chain. Thomas recalled that even the smallest ants in the lands around his castle would kill ruthlessly the bugs hundred times that large, tear them into pieces, and drag into their anthill to feed their gluttonous posterity.

“Go on, Sir Thomas,” Oleg said, but Thomas heard no confidence in his voice. The wonderer looked so strained as he’d never been before, flinched often. “The smell of the liquid ants use to mark their ways will protect us.”

“What if it won’t?”

“Better die of their jaws than of foe’s hand.”

“That’s right,” Thomas agreed with a heavy sigh. “Animals are innocent and foes will rejoice… Let them not have it!”

The wonderful rampart was growing with every step. As a small child, Thomas had seen such rings on trodden paths, after rain. The rings were made of white sand, very distinctive against the dark ground: ants were taking the sand out from the depth of earth to rampart their holes, protect against something or somebody.

The black knightly beasts, in which Thomas did not dare to recognize ants, were coming towards them more and more often. Only by miracle none of them bumped into the men. Suddenly Thomas saw a well-fed badger who climbed heavily out of its dark hollow nearby, scratched its fat belly, trotted across the field. A huge ant was running to intercept it. He was five times that large, with his monstrous sickles of jaws apart. The badger looked soft, unprotected. The colossal jaws should have cut it in two at once, with no effort at all.

The ant came onto the badger, like a black wind, his metal antennae touched it on the go. The animal squatted and froze. Paying no more heed to him, the ant dashed away. The badger gave a snort of discontent, trotted along the same way, sniffing the puny shoots that stuck out of the dry ground.

“Badgers… have magic?” Thomas whispered in fear.

“Hardly they have,” Oleg replied indifferently. “Antes may treat them as pretty birds or fishes. Or badgers may be sacred animals protected by ant gods… I don’t know, Sir Thomas.”

The yellow wall was growing/ Thomas noticed some branchy trees with thick trunks. The closest were sticking out of the gleaming rampart itself, the middle row was shaken with mighty blows of huge golden blocks that often came rolling down from the wall. Only the third row of trees remained intact. In the forestless steppes, they only grew there, around the gold-yellow rampart. Thomas suspected ants had brought selected acorns from the far Forest on purpose.

Oleg started to turn, lest they come straight into the wall, dazzling in the sunlight. In times, black knights emerged on the top of it, with big gleaming boulders in mandibles. Some of them frowned at the strange creatures, moved their long metal antennae, while others simply unclenched their jaws to let the boulders roll down, jumping on the unevenness. Some stones got stuck. Freshly washed by underground water, they had a special bright glitter.

One boulder rushed down, jumping, until it rolled into a young oak, which Thomas and Oleg were passing by. The blow made the oak shake, sprinkle sap out of the scratch.

The sun was sinking slowly to the horizon. The top of the wall blazed with unbearably bright red-orange light. Thomas turned his head anxiously, tried to increase his pace. “No time to leave?” he said in fear.

“We’ll spend the night here,” Oleg agreed.

“With these monsters all around?”

“Would you prefer a way back? The Forest is still close… And the lands of this tribe are in three or four days’ journey around.”

Thomas glanced back anxiously at the colossal rampart, along which they were walking, jumped away from the boulder that rolled straight on him. “Well, let’s go. We must go, as you Ruses put it. Off chance it will come right!” Oleg was silent and concentrated.

They walked until the sun was under the skyline and the dusk came onto the steppes. With no arrangement, they started to pick up dry branches on the go. Once they had armfuls of those, they halted. At last, Oleg could use his bow: whether the animals were sacred or not, the travelers vowed no fidelity to the ant god. As a sign of respect, they would sacrifice bones and limbs to him. And also feathers if their prey is a bird.

When the fire blazed up, Thomas clayed the killed monitor lizard and two skinny ducks that had dared to fly over their heads, put them into the coals, sprinkled with hot ashes all over. “Now we have protection!.. Fire is fire. No animal comes near it. Even antes. They are no men, after all… Are they?”

“Who knows.” Oleg shrugged. “I heard different opinions on it. I only know antes were created by gods long before humans. Antes lived for millions of years but did something wrong or displeased… Other sorcerers say they failed to fulfill some great plan of gods… I don’t know, really. I explored other things.”

“Is there a sorcerer who explores ants?”

“There is. More than one. Antes are a strange nation: very ancient, very mysterious. They have their own world, own rites and ways. As long as you follow them, no trouble… By the way, these spells are driven out over time. Renew them!”

Reluctantly, Thomas sprinkled himself, shaking out the last drops. Oleg rubbed the odorous liquid into his bare arms, moistened his hair with it. The smell of ants made a pleasant mix with the odor of roast meat from the fire.

The sky was going dark slowly, as well as the ground, only the distant ramparts still shone with coarse-grained whiteness. Thomas alerted at every rustle behind, every move of shadows. His hand clapped on the sword hilt involuntarily. Ants rushed by trodden ways, and Oleg, as Thomas noticed, had selected a place far from the trampled paths. Ants dragged dry tree trunks in their jaws, carried animals and even birds, others had jaws empty but bellies almost dragging along. Oleg explained obligingly that was the ants’ way to transport mead and water.

Oleg took the kettle. He went to where the ants with swollen bellies were running and soon came back with the kettle full of cold spring water. The fire was lighting a small spot. Beyond it, there was darkness, full of scary rustle and moving clots of black. Thomas shrieked when a huge cast head, which looked like an anvil, emerged from the dark suddenly. The supple feelers reached Thomas and started to move, feeling the jets of warmed air. Thomas turned stone when the antennae crawled, with a metal screech, on his armor, touched his legs and chest. Fortunately, the ant caught his visor, it fell down with a clang, screening Thomas’s face from the world. When the ant started to examine the head of strange creature, Thomas just closed his eyes and stopped breathing.

The ant felt Thomas thoroughly. In times he had doubts and started feeling again, once even grasped by hand with jaws. With utmost clarity, Thomas realized that if the ant moves them a bit closer, his armor would crack like the quail egg shell!

Once he dashed away, Thomas breathed out noisily, raised his visor with trembling fingers. “A dragon will be a smaller fright to me!”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Oleg warned. “We have to cross the mountains that have more dragons than bats. Dragons are only good in their sleep! And if a dragon is awake… and hungry… And they are almost always hungry…”

“Sir wonderer, can’t we take another road?”

“Aren’t you late for your Krizhina?.. By the way, that ant was very angry.”

“You know their tongue?” Thomas was surprised.

“Only a bit of it,” Oleg comforted. “Just the smallest bit!”

They heard a trample of many hard dry legs in the dark, resonant clicks of sharp claws on the stone.

Oleg jumped up. “Away from fire! Fast!” he urged, then splashed the rest of water out of their small kettle, ran away after Thomas. Half a dozen big ants came from the dark. Thomas made a move to return for his sword, which lay glittering near the fire, but Oleg seized him by shoulders and held.

One of the ants all but came running into the fire, wheeled round at once, a strong jet of water gushed out of his swollen belly. They felt a poignant smell of formic acid. Coals hissed, a cloud of steam flew up. Other ants surrounded the fire, turned their bellies to it — some only raised on their forelegs, their bellies tucked up — and spurted at the dying fire from all around. The coals burst with hissing, faded. A cloud of sharp smell went spreading in all directions,

When the ants left, after having put the fire out, Oleg picked up the kettle, which was half full of formic acid, packed the bag and went into the night. The steppes were only lit by stars and the waning moon. Thomas took the swords and the bow with arrows, hurried after the wonderer who knew the language of black ants, though only the smallest bit of it.

Oleg made a fire again, a smaller one. Thomas jumped up. “Will they come?”

“We got far enough… I hope.”

“Keep the fire smaller,” Thomas begged. “I don’t like anyone looking over my head! Even if their genealogy is hundred times as long as mine!”

The kettle emitted a strong sharp smell. Oleg caught Thomas’s sight at it, said comfortingly, “Now we have enough spray for a week! I hope we’ll get out of here before.”

“A spray for ants…” Thomas muttered unhappily. “And for dragons?”

“No spray will do for dragons,” Oleg agreed with great sympathy.

Thomas glanced at the smelling kettle with disgust. “What are we to cook in?”

“We’ll pour it into the cup,” Oleg suggested. He met the knight’s perplexed eyes and explained, “The one you have in your bag. Holy Grail, that’s it.”

Thomas blushed crimson with noble indignation. “Sir wonderer, how can you!.. That’s a shrine! A relic! Even a wild Pagan should feel…”

Oleg interrupted, raised both palms as a sign of defeat. “Let’s cook in your helmet then. Agree?”

“Sir wonderer…”

“Is it hole-ridden?”

“No. But it’s a knight’a helmet!”

“Then let’s pour the formic acid there,” Oleg resolved. “As the kettle is made for boiling fish soup in.”

Thomas twitched with protest. “That smell will cling to my helmet for lifetime! No, we’d rather use it for cooking. Lancelot once boiled fish in his helmet, Sir Gawain made porridge in it, and Percival…”

“And Arey, the god of war,” Oleg interrupted with delight, “once could not go to war because a dove had made a nest in his helmet and laid her eggs. Ares had to wait until her nestlings hatched and learnt to fly! No wars on earth for all that time…”

“Bloody bird!” Thomas swore with indignation. “To deprive noble knights of their feats? That’s disgusting.” He leaned back, going to lie down, elbowed a big orange stone aside. Suddenly his eyes opened wide, he hastened to roll the boulder close, lifted it with effort on his knees, whispered in a suddenly hoarse voice. “I swear on blood… of Christ that is the filthy lucre! Was Herodotus right even about such trifles? I’ll read all of it as soon as I’m back!”

Oleg kept indifferent silence. Thomas spat on the stone, rubbed it with gauntlet. The yellow glitter grew brighter. Excited, he squatted up, started to break the rock: it turned out to be made of dozens of smaller stones, more than a half of which were bars of heavy porous gold.

“Pick with your sword,” Oleg gave a sullen advise. “Ants have sticky saliva… a deadly grip!”

“Saliva?”

“Or sniffles. No, that’s rather saliva, I think. In their depth of earth, they stick small pebbles together while digging their tunnels, lest they have to carry each grain above separately. Though there are lazy ones who carry stones one by one or even run empty.”

He lay down, tucked his knees up and fell asleep at once, indifferent to anything that ants could drag out of the depth of earth. However, all the night long he kept hearing in his sleep some puffing sounds, heavy sighs, scuffing, dull pounding. The knight struck with his fists, elbows. Sometimes Oleg seemed to hear Thomas hitting with his head, even flinging himself on the sword hilt to break apart the blocks of gold stuck together.

All the night Oleg was escaping the thunder. He dreamed of a ferocious battle of gods: Pang shook the earth, Targitai set him in a plow, Peroun hurled thunderbolts. When at dawn he opened his eyes, shivering with cold, Thomas was still breaking huge stone blocks, like a slave in stone quarry. On his right, there was a hill of waste, tall enough for a horse to hide behind, on his left — a bright shining pile of gold nuggets, each no smaller than a fist. The pile of gold reached to the knight’s waist. Behind Thomas, there was a scatter of just broken stones, with big nuggets still covered with clots of earth.

Astonished, Oleg turned to the glittering rampart. Anxious, fussy ants were stopping up a breach wide enough to drag the Trojan horse into. One by one, they ran onto the top of the wall, dropped the porous blocks still smelling of underground into the gap.

Thomas glanced back vacantly, followed the wonderer’s eyes. Suddenly, he moaned, shook his fists in dismal. The new blocks used by ants to close the breach had twice that much gold nuggets in them! The first rays of sun fell on the top on the rampart, giving the gold its teasing glitter: it was so clean, washed, and bright!

“Ants dig deeply,” Oleg explained patiently. “Even small ones make their holes two or three sazhens[23] deep and these big ones can dig in three or four versts! All sorts of things can be found there, unavailable to man…”

Thomas watched the glaring rampart with grievous doggish eyes, his Adam’s apple twitched, as he gulped the saliva of hunger. That miracle was to stand in steppes up to the autumn, then ruined by winter snowstorms, razed to the ground. The spring would drown the heavy gold in muddy floods, the summer powder it with dust. No one will find the treasure then, unless by a random dig and until he gets too deep into the earth. “How often they come out?”

“Once they did it every summer,” Oleg replied after he thought for a while. “Old men say so… Then much less frequently. Now these ants are said to come above once in a century. They must have dug themselves too deep! There will come a time when they will get completely hidden from our world: sinister as you call it.”

Thomas ignored his attack. “Will all the gold stay there?” he cried in anxiety.

Oleg smiled sadly. “How can ants know what gold is? As they dig, they take up everything that blocks the way: sand, rocks, ore, gold, bones of unknown animals… Hey, aren’t you afraid anymore?”

Thomas glanced askew at the breach, waved his hand. “Dazzled by the glitter of gold.”

“At night?”

“That’s the sort of glitter to retain in full dark, sir wonderer! I saw how a noble knight killed another one, also a crusader, whom he was releasing the Holy Sepulcher with, for a single stone like these!”

Oleg got up, packed his things, checked arrows: someone had scattered them at night. There were many tracks of clawed paws around. He found his sword in two score steps, with holes made by spiky jaws on the baldric. Suddenly he went pale, clapped on his chest fussily, as though catching a grasshopper, turned his pockets inside out hastily, slapped his chest again. His eyes became glassy.

Chapter 34

Feeling something wrong, Thomas asked anxiously, “What? What’s happened?”

“I forgot to sprinkle charms… Ants took them!”

Thomas sighed with sympathy, made a helpless gesture. “You slept like a log. You’d hardly wake up if they took you… I caught a glimpse of some ant feeling you but I thought you were exchanging some news. As you know their language a bit! And I was busy… Don’t miss a woman — God will give a wench!”

“What wench?” Oleg asked in perplexity.

“You can make other charms. I can lend you my sword for it.”

“No, thanks.”

“Did you sanctify them in Jordan?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“What’s the matter then? The same wood makes icon and spade. I can fetch you the knottiest branch.”

Oleg glanced in the knight’s sympathetic face, shook his head. “Ready to leave your gold?.. I did not expect that. Thank you. Alas, I have no time to make new ones. If even I had, I’d have to get used to new charms. To learn from own mistakes… And now even the smallest mistake can cost our lives.”

He scooped the formic acid from the kettle, sprinkled his hair with it, rubbed it into arms and legs. Thomas goggled his eyes. “What?.. What you want, mad man?”

Oleg grinned sadly. “You guessed right. We’ll have to go into the burrow.”

Thomas jumped up, as though he sat on a poisonous snake. “To ants?!”

“It were no badgers who took them. Don’t worry, their holes are wide enough for me to get in.” He belted with the sword, clasped tightly.

Dumbfounded, Thomas watched him adjust the bow and quiver on his back, sprinkle them with formic acid. “Do you… mean it?” The knight was shaking with indignation.

“Certainly I do.”

Thomas spat, picked up his sword, spoke in rage. “Let no foe say I left my friend, even when he went mad… This heat can really melt any brain. Lead the way, sir wonderer!” He poured the rest of formic acid on himself, screwed up of the poignant smell, tossed the cattle away uncaringly.

“Why throwing the kettle away?” Oleg reproached. “What will you cook in?”

“Going to get out alive?” Thomas wondered. “What mad off-chancers live in Rus’!”

“The main thing is to save your soul. And the body may be eaten.”

“Body does not matter,” Thomas agreed. “A knight consists of honor, glory, valor, and fidelity to his Lady!”

Oleg started to climb up quickly, resting his feet on gold bars. Thomas groaned as he saw the wonderer trampling roughly on the pure gold. Aside, there was a glaring flash of rainbow-colored sparkles, as though a sunray refracted by a block of Venetian glass. Thomas gasped, squatted helplessly. Among basalt, granite and golden nuggets, there was a diamond of the very first water, the size of a fist! Oleg glanced back with discontent, sighed and, having climbed over the top of the rampart silently, started down the inner side.

Thomas felt struggle inside, but his best friend vanished below, so he had to leave the diamond and other sparkling gems. He gave himself a strong vow to come back sometime and kick them all out from the ants’ rampart. Sapphires suit Krizhina very much, and emeralds will fit her little niece.

After the wonderer, he climbed down on the flat trampled ground. Neither a pebble nor a grass blade: everything smoothed and cleaned. The air was impregnated with a strong smell of formic acid. Black ants rush about swiftly, like knights on tourney, colliding in the same way, their armor cracks, but ants run on as though nothing happened. Despite the early hour, some were carrying killed animals. Over the northern side of the rampart, there suddenly came dozens of big ants, each with a saiga, still or feebly fluttering, in jaws: they must have encountered a big herd. Attracted by the exciting smell, scores of ants darted out a huge wide well and rushed swiftly to meet them.

Thomas and Oleg came to the dark gap, felt the cold and dampness of grave from there. Some ants, as black as sin, emerged from the dark. They had big stones, still glistening from the ant saliva used to stick together sand, rocks, and gold nuggets, in jaws. An ant carrying a saiga darted past Thomas, all but knocked him down into the well, crossed the brim deftly, and dashed down with a clatter of claws, like a squirrel on a tree.

“Each has six paws,” Thomas said in a shaky voice, “All hooked!” Oleg, with no word, sat down on the brim of the shaft, turned, and started his descent. Thomas crossed himself and followed his friend. “May you protect me, Our Lady! Though you have a baby to look after — and babies need a constant eye! — may you look at me, your true knight, in times! If I survive, I will bring on your altar some gold from that pile above.”

He climbed down hastily, clinging to ledges, ready to fall down into the fathomless well at every moment. His fingers got numb under the weight of iron armor, sweat poured over his eyes. He seemed to have fallen long ago if not his fear to knock down the wonderer who was climbing below. The clawed legs rustled around, as ants darted by, like massive anvils with iron rods instead of legs, and vanished in the coal-black shade that crossed the well slantwise. Thomas did not dare to shake the biting drops of sweat off his face. A rock flew by, all but threw Thomas down. He listened, but the boulder disappeared in the shadow silently: neither a thud nor a splash nor a squeak there below.

The wonderer vanished in the dark. Thomas felt creepy, hurried up. Fortunately, ants never bothered to smooth the walls of their well, so there were enough ledges and hollows to rest hands and feet on. When he plunged into the shade himself, he saw a bifurcating tunnel in the wall. Surely, the wonderer picked up the worst way.

He was descending for a long while. Probably he would have to crawl down to the very bottom and get on the turtle’s back — some say the Earth stands on three whales or even elephants — but ants must have grown tired of digging straight or they may have mistaken, black fools, but soon Thomas got sliding down a steep slope, sometimes clinging to protruding stones: they were glued in too tightly to be torn out. If the builders of the Tower of David had ants helping them, crusaders would have never destroyed its walls. Thomas admitted that honestly, as one should be unbiased even to enemies. After they are defeated, of course.

The long tunnel was going straight gradually. They were still descending, but Thomas took his hands off the wall: his iron gauntlet slid as though on a mirror! The ant saliva mortared the walls like the strongest glue, some stones protrude, stick out, but no way to take them out, only break a half and only if the stone is not wetted with saliva all over. On his go, Thomas tried to pick them with the point of sword, but it left no scratch on the smooth surface.

Moreover, the saliva shone: not so bright as torches but brighter than the moss that gave light to Agathyrsians. However, if ants were many million years older than people, they had enough time to invent some better lightning. People definitely should have done it in their place… No, ants can’t be that old. God created Man only eight thousand years ago and Man was first, while all sorts of animals and insects followed!

Thomas stumbled out of the blue, as he suddenly recalled the vague hints by Agathyrsians and even that demon whom he slayed valiantly in Constantinople — hints of his wonderer friend’s having lived very long, almost eight thousand years, and each Christian knows firmly the only one to live eight thousand years on earth was the Devil, as God created him on the First Day, while separating the Light from the Dark…

Oleg glanced over impatiently. “Sir Thomas, wake up!”

“I just dreamed,” Thomas grumbled. “About the high.” He struggled to take himself in hands, though he had no wish to have filth in them and he felt really filthy after he dared to think those vile things about the man who had not only saved his life more than once — that was nothing! — but also had taken the cup with Christ’s blood in hands more than once, which was allowed to no sinner and should have make Satan burn or at least burnt…

He kept bumping into Oleg’s back, hitting against protruding stones.

Oleg glanced back in vexation. “Sir Thomas!” he said angrily. “It’s not the place to sleep on the go! What if we were in search of your cup?”

Thomas made himself rouse. “But that’s the cup,” he muttered.

“And those are charms! They are no less important to me. At least now.”

Roused, Thomas found himself in a creepy underground passage faced with shining glass. It was sloping downwards and crossed by other holes, full of scary darting shadows, a resonant clatter of claws, a strong smell of formic acid. Thomas grasped that his valiant knightly soul had plunged into deep reflections, so unusual to it, to avoid seeing all that horror: terrible monsters darting past him and his friend, who seemed more and more strange and dangerous, while all of them were in godforsaken hellish depth of earth!

The wonderer would always pick the broadest hole, though they could walk along narrow ones too if they bent, and the way downwards. It seemed to Thomas he also preferred the tunnels with the strongest reek of ants. They waded across a stream that ran out from one wall into the other. For a long while, they walked knee-deep in icy water, clean as crystal and bouncing on the glassy floor. Ants came running to it, always from the same side, took the water in quickly. Astonished and admiring, Thomas caught the glimpse of an ant pressing to the stream: his jaws went into the water, his mouth opened, he started lapping like a big thirsty dog, absorbing the water with force through a thick tube that went into his dry belly. The black rings moved apart, started to slide off each other. As his stomach was filling, a thin unprotected film showed between the rings. Thomas noticed that professionally like an ant’s weak spot but that would only do to injure water carriers: ant soldiers would hardly march into battle with such paunches.

Ants with swollen bellies ran away into the dark, while Thomas followed the wonderer into even more fear: deeper and deeper, where it smelled stronger than any havoc of anthill. Even ants they met there were strange. Above, all of their kin were the same: wiry, sun-tempered, black, fast, and evil. The ants below moved slowly — Thomas was kicked down only twice — had a smaller size and even smelled a bit different.

The tunnel suddenly led into a small cave, with three dark gaping holes on a level with the floor. Near one of them, there were two ants, bigger than any ones Thomas ever saw even on the surface, their long antennae moving. His heart wrung with fear: the wonderer headed for that hole!

Thomas followed his friend trembling and clinging close to him. As the ants saw them, they raised on all the six legs that glittered like metal. They had a menacing air. Sharp jaws moved apart, Thomas saw clearly the small shimmering teeth. Antennae and feelers explored the air, reached for the newcomers, but the ants made no move to come closer: watchful guards to the passage. “May we come back?” Thomas whispered. “Or into those other holes…”

“They are abandoned or empty,” Oleg replied without looking there. “And we need storerooms.”

Supple feelers darted to Oleg from both sides, started feeling, touching, pushing. The wonderer patted those thick antennae with hard brushes on ends, squeezed himself up to the entrance at once, cast a quick glance back, and Thomas saw his whitened face. He rushed after Oleg. There was a screech on his armor, but he broke through, as though it were a wall of shields, spears, and swords, uttered his battle cry habitually, gripped the sword hilt on the go, draw the blade out by half — and found himself running after the wonderer on the glassy floor, inside a broad pipe with no end to it seen.

Oleg jumped aside in time, should any monster attack him, as it looked to Thomas, and the monster, with menacing jaws apart, rushed on. Thomas, with his heart pounding in panics, grasped lately that ants were simply running on their own business. Should one knock Thomas and Oleg down, that meant nothing: they often bumped into each other as well, so the crash of bony armors was heard constantly.

“They let you in?” he cried to Oleg’s back.

“By smell,” Oleg answered without looking back. “And also by secret sign I gave them.”

Thomas felt his hair rising on ends. “How… you know?”

“I’ve spotted it,” Oleg blurted impatiently. “While you admired the beauty of this place!”

Thomas blushed with shame so bitterly that felt his ears prickling, as though in a frosty wind: he, a man of war, overlooked the watchword of sentinels, while a man of religion, though a profoundly false one, spotted all of it and interpreted correctly! There seem to be some good things about Paganism too. Not everything of it should be swept away, as cautious thinkers suggest. We may take some things from the past…

“We’re getting close,” Oleg said suddenly. “Take a hold of yourself, Sir Thomas.”

“A hold?” Thomas whispered in terror. “Are there more horrors ahead?”

They entered a cave that reeked of decay. Thomas held his nose, mended his pace, even left Oleg behind. There were white picked bones by the wall. Thomas caught a glimpse of them and turned away at once, quivering, his forehead almost hit against the wall that suddenly leapt out on him. He did not think the world ever had animals of such size!

When they came, by a broad passage, into the next cave, Thomas stiffened, unable to move. “Go along the wall,” Oleg advised comfortingly. “Pretend you are going to no church but tavern!”

In the dim light, strange and ghostly, as though cast by invisible moon, there was a slowly moving great dark mass of a two-headed hill, cracking and crunching heavily. As Thomas looked closer, he discerned pale legs, as long as tree trunks, with jaggy shins, then thick bony shells and combs. There was constant crash, as though a monstrous stone breaker was reducing huge blocks to road metal.

Oleg went along the wall carefully, avoiding the giant legs that scratched, twitched, tried to drag the headless bodies, many with their bellies torn out, their ovipositors pulled away. Most of the underground monsters were dead, but the half-dead ones demonstrated creepy vitality: still tried to crawl, climb, their hooked legs got hold of their neighbors.

“The monsters of underground?” Thomas asked in a thin voice that made him hate himself. “If these ones are here, I can imagine what things live in the very depth!”

“In the very depth… er… a giant turtle on which the earth stands. Or those are elephants? Or whales…”

“No, not that deep,” Thomas protested. “Why digging through? I don’t think even these ants of Herodotus could do it…”

“Do you think they could dig down to the hell then?”

Thomas got convulsed, as he imagined the tunnel they walked by leading them straight into the cave with hot blazing fires, huge pots of boiling tar heating over, poor sinners sitting in them and screaming terribly… He’d rather not get there as that would be a predicament. The knightly codex says to help the offended, but those are sinners. Even the Holy Virgin does nothing to protect them, and I can’t be holier than she is…

Keeping his head busy with godly thought and whispering prayers, he squeezed himself after the wonderer into a cave so large that the previous one looked a doghouse against it. All the colossal space was covered with giant corpses of strange underground monsters, whitish and hairless. Their skin looked disgustingly soft, but their heads were terrible: armored with bony shells fitted tightly, with only a narrow slit for eyes protected with a lowering thick plate, a huge mouth wide enough to swallow a horse…

Thomas wondered in fear why only the head was protected while the heart could be speared easily. It was seen through the translucent skin: huge, still pulsing feebly, vulnerable!

“Diggers of holes,” Oleg said suddenly, as though he read Thomas’s thoughts. “Head goes first and body’s dragged after, squeezing in the narrow passage. That’s why they are so soft, shapeless… And you are a brave knight! Even in this place you think own thoughts.”

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas began, flattered by the praise, “can those Secret Seven have a hand in the theft of your charms?”

Oleg walked silent for a long time. Finally, he shook his head. “Hardly they can. Ants do not obey them. All men, either secret or overt, are the same to ants. It appears to me that Secret Seven lost our track… We vanished too suddenly when picked by Agathyrsians!”

“And then Agathyrsians took us on the face of earth far away,” Thomas muttered. “If they search the place we vanished at, combing through hills and dales, hamlets and villages, we will leave unspotted: I for Britain, you for the Rus’ of Herodotus…”

“I hope so,” Oleg replied, but he did not sound confident.

A forceful push on thigh sent Thomas flying with thunder into a corner. Moaning, he got up, shook his fist after the ant running away. Once he rose, he was kicked down by another ant who carried a huge angular block in his jaws — or mandibles, as the wonderer kept calling them. Thomas followed the offender with eyes, howled of double vexation: the saliva-glued block was all but whole formed by sapphires. The smallest one is as large as a fist!

“Be patient,” a distant voice told him. “We’ll be there soon.”

“Do you know where charms are?”

“How can I?” Oleg sounded surprised. “We’ll have to rummage their storerooms!”

“Rummage…” Thomas moaned. “A needle in a haystack! You should have made your horses, dragons and other animals life-sized…”

He dragged along with his last strength, groaning, trying to keep in sight the broad back crossed with the long sword and the bow with quivers. The wonderer increased his pace, all but vanishing from sight, waited impatiently, then dashed along like mad again, extremely happy with his having no iron armor on. Once Thomas came up with him, saw the wonderer’s bare arms bleeding and covered with scratches and bruises: marks of his collisions with ants, so armor was no useless burden at all!

Thomas quickened his steps, bumped into Oleg. If he says, the knight thought nervously, we are walking in the mouth of a colossal animal — either sleeping or long dead or turned stone — I shan’t be surprised. I’ll only thank Our Lady for the beast sleeping as long as possible. And once he rouses, let him and ants kill each other in a struggle for power in the underground world and the last ant die of malice…

They came into a broad cave with walls of red quartz. Ants had only stuck the cracks in them with their saliva: just a glimmer of light, but their eyes got completely accustomed by that time — Thomas was the first to notice huge chests along the wall. He gasped, his sight ran along the row, counted forty of them, large and larger. Each chest had an ancient symbol on its lid and sides: a big svarga, carved either in wood or metal. Thomas had seen the likes of it in his native land, left by the first settlers on the coast rocks. They say those signs once had been everywhere but the first missionaries of Christianity were the ones to destroy them zealously: burn clothes with the image of svarga, shatter jugs with it, trim it away from walls and shutters. And those chests, judging by huge signs on the most prominent places, must have been left by ancient people! Old legends say they were extremely powerful…

Oleg jerked his head with irritation, passed along the whole row quickly. Thomas hobbled after him, moaning. “Sir wonderer!” he begged in a shaky voice near the last chest. “Just a look in!”

“Locked,” Oleg barked out without slowing his pace. “I don’t think ants could put charms there and lock!”

“We’ll find charms!” Thomas assured ardently. “But I’m so fascinated to see what the ancients put there! Just with half an eye!”

Oleg stopped near the last chest: the smallest one, it did not reach even to Thomas’s belt. The massive lid was so close that not a single hair could pass into the slit, and the thick cramps were joined reliably with a paunchy padlock. Thomas turned it in excitement, got sweated and, finally, begged in despair, “I know holy pilgrims are taught none of such things, but you are a Pagan pilgrim…”

Oleg took a grass blade out of his pocket, smoothed it carefully, tucked into the dark keyhole. There was a click, the cramp suddenly got longer, hung released in the hinges, while the heavy padlock fell down on Thomas’s foot. The knight gave a shriek of pain and surprise, goggled his eyes. “How you did it?”

“Not me,” Oleg muttered. “Breaking grass! It’s Pagan.”

Thomas hesitated whether to accept help from Pagan magic potion for just a moment until his hands, as though they had own will, gripped the lid, his feet took a firmer stand, and the bronze slab was lifted with no screech.

Thomas rose on tiptoe, the orange reflection from inside the chest fell on his face. The knight’s eyes widened, brows flew up. “Impossible…” he said in astonishment. “Who could gather that much?”

Oleg scooped a handful of gold coins. Their edges were uneven, he could only see a stern hook-nosed profile on the face side and a big svarga on the reverse. Other coins had a three-headed mountain, which resembled a trident, on them. Oleg recognized it, though with effort. The only mountain in Atlantis. It could be seen by sailors from far away, with the signal fires lit on its top at night and in bad weather. On the reverse, there were strange signs: prototypes of lines and cuts used in Rus’ up to the coming of Christianity…

Oleg went dark. He felt a heartache at recalling the men in black clothes who burnt books and writings on birch bark, destroyed the manuscripts written in lines and cuts, rubbed the local script and local culture off the face of Slavic lands in a hurry to set the other culture instead… “Saw enough of it?” Oleg asked harshly. “Let’s go!” Without waiting for the knight, he went to the exit of the cave quickly.

Thomas opened his mouth to protest, but the wonderer’s back was seen at the other end of the cave and something about his pace, his raised shoulders gave the knight a hint that if he did not hurry he’d have to search the way out by himself. Oleg was furious, as he happened to be very seldom. Whether Thomas was guilty or not, it was better for him to keep off the heat of the moment.

At breakneck pace, Thomas dashed after his friend, without even slamming the lid shut. Oleg had vanished from sight. Thomas hurried, his soul pounded with fear. He swore not to let Satan entice him with either gold or gems, as it is shame for a Christian to yield where a benighted Pagan resisted… However, the Pagan may simply not know the true worth of treasures.

The great hall opened at once: Thomas had just darted from under the arch. His legs gave way. He felt crushed by the magnificence. The cave shone with green malachite. One of the walls was vertical, a great radiant throne towered near it. Three marble stairs led to the throne, and a huge golden svarga was glaring above it!

Thomas walked by the wonderer’s side, half a step behind. His heart thumped very fast. His feet stepped on the dented stairs, time-worn and scratched by sharp claws of all the ants who ran there for thousands of years.

The closer they came to the throne, the bigger it seemed. It must have been made for a man twenty or thirty feet tall if human at all. Thomas gasped, nudged Oleg gently. On the right of the throne, a broad sword, three times as tall as a man, hung on a wall hook. The pendants on its wide handle were the size of a knight’s shield, the smallest of gems were as large as Thomas’s fist. “Were they giants,” Thomas asked, for some strange reason, in a whisper, “or heroes?”

Oleg looked around vacantly, waved aside. “Forget it. We need charms, no golden trinkets!”

Suddenly. Thomas saw huge logs at the other end of the hall. It took him some time to grasp those were clean-picked bones: human — if any man could be that tall — bones and skulls, as though the last guards of the underground palace stayed remained forever! “Were that ants?” Thomas whispered even more apprehensively. “They gobbled them?”

“Sir Thomas, stop getting rubbish in your head!” Oleg replied with annoyance. “Killed by ants, by each other, or something else — why should we care? We need charms!”

“I see, I see,” Thomas said hastily and nodded with such ardor that it caused a dangerous crunch in his neck. “Once I got my finger trapped in the door. At that moment, I didn’t care if all the world goes to ruin…”

Oleg darted past the throne, into the dark passage that definitely had once been secret. Thomas rushed after him.

Chapter 35

Thomas lost count of caves, passages, slopes, as well as bruises, when Oleg suddenly increased his pace, muttered something, turned into a side tunnel at once. Thomas followed, like a she-goat on a short tie, as the tunnel turned often, other holes crossed it and the wonderer, carried away, was unlikely to look back if even Thomas yelled at the top of his voice or howled like a wolf.

Suddenly the wonderer broke into run. “Charms!” he cried hoarsely. “I feel charms!”

Thomas clenched his teeth, felt his gums bleeding, ran, darted into a colossal cave. The wonderer was barely visible far ahead. Cursing, Thomas rushed after him, jumped over the scattered breastplates and pieces of armor of strange forms. Many had human bones sticking out of them, skulls cracked and crumbled to dust under Thomas’s iron heels. He could see no floor under the heaps of weapons that belonged to all times and nations, shields, even some catapults, fierce curves of swords, strange spears that also combined axes and even cleavers in themselves.

The wonderer was already climbing up a pile of treasures, arms, broken fragments of golden chariots, statues of precious metals, broken chests and trunks, decayed saddle bags with gold coins pouring out of their holes at every touch. At last, the wonderer gave a triumphant roar and all but fell down, along with the unsteady top of treasure heap. Thomas’s heart froze in fright: among the chests and chariots below, there were some darts and swords pointed up. The wonderer held out by miracle, pointed to the side where the ill-fated necklace could barely be seen. “That’s it! That’s where they took it, underground devils!”

He ran down, jumping deftly on breastplates, shields, and trunks. His face shone. On his go, he put the charms on his neck.

Thomas yelled at the top of his voice. “Look out, fool!”

Oleg leapt aside, all but cut himself on the long sickle looking out from under the wheels of strange chariot. A heavy mass of chests and shields thundered down past him. One trunk burst, gold coins poured out with ringing sound. Thomas sighed: the coins covered all the immense cave up to his ankles.

The wonderer jumped down to him. “That’s all! Had a rest in cool place, now get in the sun again.”

“Do you really think I want to stay?”

“Why are you sitting then? Let’s go. I’ve found charms. There still are gods on earth!”

“Pagan,” Thomas muttered. “There’s only one God, the rest are demons. Our Lady in her unfathomable mercy has not knocked you off like a fly, as she hopes you to turn into the true faith. Do you know the way?”

“Of course I do,” the wonderer said with surprise. “That’s really simple!”

“Then I know why she saved your life up to now. Lead the way, you underground man.”

While they climbed out of the treasure cave through the low dark passage, moving on their fours in places, Thomas prayed the Holy Virgin. He felt the stone mountain pressing on his shoulders. Stones above cracked, shifted under that monstrous weight. In places, earth and small pebbles rained down.

At the very first opportunity. Thomas straightened his tired back up — and stopped in surprise. Ahead, there was a giant forest of strange translucent trees. Their trunks were three or four girths broad but only as tall as three or four man. They had swollen excruciations instead of branches and no leaves at all. Dark streams moved slowly within the trees, exfoliated, twisted into caudated rings.

Among the strange trees, there were slowly rambling ants, strange the same: slow, translucent, their inside seen through. Their small sharp jaws had a dim glitter. Ants used them to cut the trunks. A whitish layer of viscous sap came out from notches. An ant would fell down to the cut, drain all of it, and walk away slowly, his swollen belly dragged on the ground.

Unknown animals darted sometimes among the ghostly trees. So monstrous those creatures were that poor Thomas had his hair stand on ends of the insoluble question: could God have created such abomination himself? Devil definitely could do it but, as far as Thomas knew, the Almighty created all the world himself, no part left to Devil…

“Keep up,” Oleg said through gritted teeth. “You get stuck as though on the fair!”

“But monsters…”

“Domestic animals.”

“Domestic?”

“Room animals if it please you. Room or cave… Even gods may have forgotten what ants bred these animals for. Ants may have forgotten that too. Either fun or work or hunt…”

Thomas squeezed himself against the wall to let disgusting animals pass, jumped up if one darted between his legs, and dashed between the legs of bigger ones himself: falling down on his belly with a thunder, his armor ringing, his eyes closed tight.

Thomas plunged after the wonderer into a dark tunnel, walked along, bending down in places and sinking to his fours in others. The passage was a steep rise, sometimes they had to climb up all but vertically. The air gradually turned warmer, less damp. Thomas got hot and sweaty. At last, he gasped with malice, “I feel going up! But are you sure there’s a way out? We meet no ants anymore!”

“Are we bound to return to the same place precisely?”

Thomas wanted to say that definitely they weren’t, the main thing was to get out, no matter whether it would be woods or hot desert or even the nomad camp of terrible bloodthirsty Pechenegs, but the wonderer’s voice seemed sneering. Thomas paused — and the pile of gold nuggets he had left in hundred steps from the entrance into the ants’ burrow flashed in his mind! “Well,” he forced out, “let us get out where we happen to get. May it just be in sun!”

“Then we’ll have to linger,” Oleg said thoughtfully. “It’s night there above.”

“Sir wonderer!”

“Let’s keep going,” Oleg replied, as he heard dangerous notes in the voice of exhausted knight. “Stars may also make a sun to someone.”

Oleg reached out his hand to help Thomas to climb: he had heavy armor on, no light shirt, but the knight dodged with indignation, only asked in a hoarse voice, “Is the entrance close?”

“Close,” Oleg comforted hastily. “That’s said by charms.”

“Thus saith the Teacher,” Thomas muttered under his breath.

“What?” Oleg asked with surprise.

“I often heard that from my tutor,” Thomas explained. “While learning quadrivium, as every knight is obliged to… Has Christ ever been to these ants?.. The Holy Book says nothing of that but he spent forty days alone in the desert where Satan tempted him. Now I know what the temptation was…”

The shining wall facing was left far behind, they groped their way in complete darkness. Should Thomas touch the walls with head or shoulders, as he did constantly, earth and small pebbles fell down. Once there came a shower of dirty water and soaked him all over.

“Damn them for not strengthening their walls!” Thomas swore. “They are ants! Though the ones of Herodotus. Diligent, hard-working… Every good master would have done that long ago.”

“We are far beyond their anthill,” Oleg comforted.

“Why?”

“Thomas, you have the stamina of warhorse, but even so I’d have to drag you. And I value my back.”

“Is it a straighter way?”

“Half a mile.”

“And over?”

“Er… just a bit over.”

“Then two miles,” Thomas resolved. In the dark, he recoiled with such force that his armor clanged, the rock got shaking and a landslip thundered behind them. “Well,” he said reluctantly, “let’s go straight. As straight as a crow flies!”

The wonderer found his bearings in some way: he kept warning of pits and ledges with his voice. Sometimes he gripped Thomas in the dark, which made him scream in fright, dragged into a crack, as narrow as a mouse hole, that Thomas would have never found on his own but kept beating against walls for the rest of his lifetime, like a goat beats against manger.

“Is it close?” Thomas kept asking. The wonderer’s hands were holding him constantly then, and Thomas had no strength to push them away.

Once they saw a glimmer of light ahead, Thomas first thought it just seemed to him: he had spots of light floating before his eyes for a long time, but the wonderer dragged him on, urged, swore. Thomas climbed with his last strength, clutched at stones, pulled his heavy body up, rested his feet, groped blindly with his fingers spread wide apart.

He tumbled out on the surface, fell down on his back, his goggled eyes looking in the sky, so bright with stars and dented moon. The wonderer breathed hoarsely nearby. Thomas heard his choking voice. “I’d never believe… what pride brings to… Sir Thomas… you hero! Knights of Round Table not fit to hold a candle…”

“Sir wonderer!” Thomas whispered with protest, though he felt flattered.

There were shrubs on both sides and a crest blocking the sight ahead, but Thomas could see the bare top of a tall mountain. A silent shadow of a night bird, probably an owl, darted to that side. They heard a squeak in the dark, then silence again.

A grasshopper went chirring warily near Thomas. The knight looked there: the tiny green singer was seated on a grass blade in a foot from his face. The creature was fat, potbellied. He cast guarded looks at the giant monster but persisted in moving his jaggy leg on the edge of hard wing.

Thomas smiled, being moved by that. The grasshopper is definitely afraid: his big eyes goggled in fright, his feelers trembling with fear, but he chirrs his song, upholding his territory, his lands, his castle bravely against the intruding monster. Thomas moved away carefully. If he frights the bold warrior singer away, the latter will be deprived of his dominion. Other lands are all occupied and divided by others, so he, poor thing, will have to either hire or turn a knight errant. “What’s bad about being an errant knight?” Thomas said aloud and got surprised by own hoarse voice, as croaking as an old ill crow’s.

The wonderer stirred nearby, sat up heavily. His face was wet with sweat, stained with dirt. “You speak truth. The one who once made a trip around his house knows more than the one who stayed on his stove.”

“Sir wonderer… where are we? It’s mountains, no steppes…”

“Just one mountain,” Oleg corrected. He rubbed his face with force, trying to drive the tiredness away, but only spread the dirt over. “Surrounded by steppe that has no end… Things look black, Sir Thomas.”

“Again?!” Thomas moaned.

“Agathyrsians took us far to the northeast, you know. Now we have to cross flat steppes full of savage nations who kill strangers with no mercy. What is more, here we are in full view of Secret Seven. And the third thing… which threatens trouble only to you… we got so far to the east that no horse in the world will get you to Britain before the day of Saint Boromir!”

Thomas rose a bit, collapsed face first. He did not want the wonderer to see his bitter tears. His heart wrung with pain, he felt a jerk and grasped that crying, which is so easy to women, tears a man’s chest. “Then… I die,” he whispered. “Sir wonderer… I need no life without Krizhina. And she… she won’t just stay alone… but get in hands of evil men… they’ll make her unhappy!”

Oleg watched him with pity and anxiety, fingering his found charms. As he sat a bit higher, he could see the whole mountain: precipitous, its foot covered with dense forest all over. Only the top remained bare. The rocky wall had cracks but no seed of a tree took root there, even grass blades failed to clutch at the red granite, nestle in those cracks. “Fetch the firewood,” Oleg said suddenly. “I’ll go round to the mountain.”

Thomas jerked his head languidly: let all the world go to ruin if he had to part with his love, but the wonderer got up quickly, broke into the thickets like an elk, with only a rustle of bushes.

The morning came to be dull and chilly. Thomas got cold, his armor cooled. He shivered, his teeth started to chatter. His body was shaken all over by foul shudder, so he struggled up his feet, dragged together some dry twigs, which he found close in the narrow valley, managed to strike a fire. His fingers were disobedient: thrice he dropped the flint and spent a long time raking through twigs and dry grass in search of it.

The twigs got on fire fast, smokeless. It licked their grey curves with orange, gnawed at cracks and hollows with red teeth, started to crack them like well-warmed nuts. For a long while, Thomas sat by the fire, watching the dance of red flames with no thought at all, then came back to his senses as he warmed, went out of the cleft, spotted a distant stream, which could be guessed by the rich green grass.

He failed to stick the kettle on coals and had to drive some stakes in. Leaving the water on the boil, he plodded back to the stream. The wonderer had taught him a Scythian way of fishing and Thomas also knew Anglic way since he was a child. Before the water boiled, he came back carrying five big fish and two score of smaller ones in his shirt with tied sleeves.

He dumped his wriggling and jumping prey on the ground, pressed down quickly the head of the biggest burbot. With the wonderer’s sharp knife, he cut its tender white belly through, pulled out dark mucous guts and the swimming bladder that felt supple and elastic, tore away the orange liver: it had an amber glitter and was so juicy that the very sight of it made him drool over and his mortal agony, in some imperceptible way, started to turn into gentle sorrow.

Once he cleaned the small fish, he threw them into boiling water. He slashed a sweet juice-dripping stripe out of the big fat river animal, sliced it, sprinkled with the strange grey salt of Agathyrsians and, while the fish soup was cooked, he chewed that raw juicy meat. He chewed, screwing up with joy, his mouth squelching and champing, heavy drops of limpid juice hanging in the corners of it.

The water in the kettle went bubbling, he glimpsed a head with one goggled eye, outstretched fins in the turbid foam. It smelled of fish soup, splashes fell on the burning coals with a sweet hiss. Thomas sniffed, then scooped, blew at the turbid odorous liquid for a long time: a sip of hot would knock his taste off, make him unable to feel whether the stew was good or needed some more boiling, salt, or herbs. At last, he made a careful sip, tasted it in his mouth for a while, salted, tried again, put the spoon aside with content, feeling his grief not that gnawing anymore. It will come right at the end, as the wonderer puts it. Off chance there is still hope. Our souls are not out of place in this world… The wonderer will collapse of surprise. A Pagan, he thinks of knights as a likeness of rams, hitting each other on tourneys all the days long and capable of nothing more!

He fetched a supply of twigs, trying to keep himself busy always, lest the anguish come back to claw his soul. It will come right, it will all come right at the end. May the wonderer repeat these words so frequently because he’s also eaten by some grief unknown to the knight? Though so imperturbable in looks? Completely immersed in his thoughts? Or… incompletely? Off chance it will come right for him too…

The fish soup was cold when the shrubs cracked, he heard heavy steps. The wonderer moved slowly, dragged his feet. Thomas felt a prick of conscience: the wonderer was no less tired but he went scouting!

Oleg ate his meal vacantly, though he did express surprise of the knight’s strange skill: if no poor devil’s misfortune to be born a knight, he could have luck to make a good cook. Oleg supped all of the stew, sucked big bones around, but his eyes were vacant and roving. He often seized his charms, stretched his neck, sniffed the air like a hound.

Thomas got anxious, reached for his sword. Suddenly the wonderer grabbed his bow, drew the string on, felt the stretched tendon critically with his thick nail before throwing the quiver of arrows in his back and moving his shoulders to set their feathered ends straight below his left shoulder.

“You stay,” he ordered Thomas gloomily. “Aurochs coming.”

“Didn’t you like fish soup?” Thomas muttered. “I saw a bustard here, fat quails crying breathlessly… Why a huge aurochs?”

“It will make a quail to someone,” Oleg replied mysteriously. “Or even a fly.” He climbed out of the cleft, walked past the stream, stopped behind a tree. A big bustard emerged from the low shrubs nearby. A fat she-quail, followed by her brood, passed by in hundred steps, dragging her wing in case, but the wonderer gave her no second look.

Oleg’s nostrils twitched. He even pressed his ear to the ground, got up contented, showed his thumb to Thomas.

The ground started to tremble, they heard approaching rumble. A cloud of yellow dust rose far away, growing slowly. In front of it, there was a dark stripe. Soon Thomas discerned individual animals. It was a herd of aurochs rushing in avalanche, as though escaping some terrible thing.

Oleg put a heavy arrow on the bow string, waited. It seemed to Thomas still too early when he flung, as though with his whole body, the arrow forward. The tendon string made a resonant click against his leather glove. His right hand put the second arrow on, pulled the string on, bending the bow creepily into a wheel.

Arrows swished through the air: heavy, destructive, coming one upon another. Thomas watched with admiration: he had never seen the wonderer shooting that quickly and forcefully before.

The first arrow went into the breast of a big young aurochs up to the feather, others hit the youth, well-fed bull-calves, creepily and accurately. Thomas drew out his sword, rushed to the herd in fighting excitement. The aurochs dashed past, two score of them remained on the ground.

Thomas slashed the injured animals quickly, turned his shining excited face to the wonderer. “I’ve never seen such a splendid hunt!”

“I’m out of arrows,” Oleg replied with vexation.

“Or you’d have killed the whole herd?.. I didn’t expect you to be such a keen hunter!”

“Sir Thomas,” the wonderer asked, “would you do me a favor? Please help to skin them. It would also be good to take all the meat off bones.”

Thomas threw his blooded sword aside and set to the true men’s work: the joy of it could hardly be understood by women and monks. He skinned the aurochs deftly, cut away their hearts and liver, which were to make man’s arms and will strong, hurled on the laid skin. Oleg cut the meat off hastily, rolled into the skins, which were still bleeding, dragged into a deep cleft. Thomas did not rack his brain over the wonderer’s plans: he gave all of himself to the amusement of knight, as though back to his blessed Britain!

Oleg picked up two slices of meat, went climbing up the slope. Thomas followed him with vacant eyes: high above, there was a wide stone ledge, a huge black hollow over it looked like a spare way out for Agathyrsians with all their belongings, kettle, carts, and herds. If the wonderer preferred a look into that hole, he risked to have no taste of tender sirloin roasting on the coals, spreading over befuddling odors, like a flower. But if a sweet flower drives bumblebees and butterflies mad, that smell could do the same even to a noble knight who passed Crimea and Rome and even saw the priest’s pear tree, though he still did not know what the wonderer found peculiar about it.[24]

He gulped down the saliva of hunger, waiting patiently for the wonderer to come back. Oleg came long after, tired, with his elbows scratched, rolled two more big slices into fresh-off skins, darted away. Thomas spat angrily and had his meal in proud solitude. That time the wonderer did not turn up so long that Thomas got anxious. To while away the waiting time, he lay down with his head on his sword, fell asleep.

He woke up and gasped: the sun got half below the skyline. The wonderer messed about the fading fire: blew the coals up, tossed new twigs. “Keep sleeping,” he comforted the knight. “You need a counsel with your pillow.”

“What pillow?” Thomas grumbled in vexation. “God gives day, devil gives sorrows.”

“Sorrows? But also a horse.”

“Who gives it?” Thomas asked. “God or devil?”

The wonderer put the kettle of water on the fire, squatted with groan. “I’m not good at Christian mythology. You may think the horse is sent by my gods. They once were your gods too…”

His face darkened. The faith and gods of others were then brought at the points of swords to his native land too, and Russian temples were burnt and destroyed! And sorcerers were beheaded, quartered, impaled to strengthen the faith of Christ. “Sleep, Sir Thomas.” He did not command but asked in half a voice, as though his throat squeezed by one’s strong hand. “Sleep…”

Strangely, Thomas fell fast asleep all but at once, making up for lost time. He opened his eyes again at dawn, when the sun set fire to clouds with its blazing arrows and the eastern edge of the sky was golden and ready to flare. The wonderer sat at the same place by the fire, in the same doleful pose. As he saw or guessed Thomas awake, he got up slowly to his feet. Thomas heard a distinct crunch of Oleg’s stiffened joints.

“Get up, brave knight! I see the great future of Angles. Drag the meat out…” He was interrupted by a thundering roar. A small avalanche came down the steep slope: stones rushed down, crushing shrubs and small trees. Thomas seemed to see a cloud of bluish smoke emerging from the dark hole.

Oleg clasped his hands in fright, dashed up the steep slope. The heavy sword bounced on his back: the baldric was not clasped tight. Thomas gave a shudder, pulled his sword out, took a firmer stand and started to wait, gripping the sword hilt with both hands.

Climbing, the wonderer all but reached the hole when there was a red flash in the dark. A scary green paw came out: as large as a log, very sharp-clawed, covered with thick plates of scales…

The claws scratched on the stone, leaving deep marks. After that, a grey-green rock came out from the cave, as it seemed to Thomas, but that rock suddenly came apart and Thomas got his legs trembling: it was a dragon! Sir Gawain, according to singers, had once slain a dragon as large as a warhorse but that one was ten times that large! Even with less than half of his body out, he looked like a long barn, his back covered with bony plates that turned thick scales on his sides, each scale the size of a knightly shield. The dragon’s head was as large as a bull, and his mouth could easily house a nanny goat with two kids!

The dragon opened his mouth, as red as hell’s stove, his teeth like daggers, uttered a sullen roar. Thomas dropped his sword and clutched at the helmet, lest it be blown away with the terrible wind. The beast’s nostrils were curved like doghouses, emitted either steam or smoke. His eyes were two kettle bottoms: prominent, huge, unblinking. His belly rubbed against stones with a screech of Egyptian pyramid being dragged, his back brushed on the vault, the bony plates were showered with pebbles and earth dust. The beast’s paws were similar to frog’s or lizard’s if one could imagine a lizard as big as a hill.

The beast stopped, jerked its huge snout, squinting in the bright sun. The sunrays got refracted in the prominent eyes covered with a transparent film of skin. The dragon gave a roar again, started backing and hunching. His flabby neck, in faded, shabby bony mails, got wrinkled with thick folds.

Chapter 36

Trembling all over, Thomas said loudly a prayer to Holy Virgin, the defender and patroness of bold warriors, entreating her to drive the dragon back into the hole: that beast was too huge even for Lancelot together with all the Knights of the Round Table to cope… Suddenly he stopped praying, swore angrily, with bad words of all the saints, their mothers, children, and relatives: the wonderer had climbed on the stone ledge, picked up the crumpled skin, and rushed to the beast!

Thomas bellowed, calling the foolish Pagan not to get into the mouth of his beastly god. The human sacrifice was cancelled by Christ who became the last sacrifice himself, so don’t be foolish, stop, wait… If I had a good horse and long lance, he thought angrily, I could gallop on the dragon. Whether kill him or not, but die with honor. Now I can only fall dead along with the Pagan…

The dragon opened his mouth, which looked like a cellar, uttered a demanding roar. Oleg on his run flung the skin into it. The dragon’s jaws slammed with an earth-shaking thud, started to move, grinding the meat along with the skin, like giant millstones.

Thomas climbed on the ledge near Oleg who breathed heavily. The wonderer turned, happy to see the knight. “Sir Thomas? Most welcome! Why no meat with you? Please bring it, as much as you can.”

Thomas was out of breath, his eyes blazed with the courage of martyr. “Sir wonderer…” he babbled, panting, “strange games… you play…”

“Play?” Oleg got confused. “If you see fun in it, I’d change with you, Sir Thomas! I have stacks of work overhead. No time for games.”

“And… er… dragon?”

“Dragon?” Oleg got confused again. “Ah, serpent? That is the horse I told you of. Or I forgot to tell?”

Thomas lowered his hefty sword, feeling a bit ridiculous. “The… horse? No need… to fight?”

“No more than with your warhorse, Sir Thomas. Only while teaching it with bridle… While we feed him, he won’t devour us. But if he gets hungry…”

“I see!” Thomas cried. He did not dare to drop his heavy sword, only sheathed it, rushed down the slope as fast as he could. Wild ideas collided in his mind, strange faces darted by. Thomas forced himself to think of nothing, lest he go mad like some men in that long exhausting journey from northern lands to Jerusalem. All sorts of things happened to those who got into that strange new world with no winter, where people had faces as black as tar — at first crusaders mistook them for devils from hell — and everything went another way…

He dragged the meat above, bathing in sweat, but did not dare to take off even the baldric with two-handed sword, not to mention five-stoned armor. Oleg hurled the meat into the mouth of dragon who opened his jaws less and less willingly. At last he refused to open them. Oleg shoved a bleeding slice straight to his nostrils. The dragon looked at it with disgust in lackluster eyes and turned away, as he had no eyelids and, as Thomas realized, could not close eyes.

“Enough?” Thomas asked, staggering. Turbid sweat was pouring over his eyes, his legs giving way, worn out by that constant climbing up and down. Thomas felt pity for monkeys who had to climb trees all the day long.

“Are you kidding?” Oleg wondered. “It’s time to carry up all the rest of meat! A saturated serpent won’t rush on it. While hungry, he wouldn’t have devoured all of it but flung it sideways, trampled on… He’s a very stupid animal, after all. God created him long ago, when He was young and did not know the better way.”

Thomas dragged himself back on feeble feet. He was glad he had time for sleep and rest before, though now one could wring him out and throw down to wipe feet on, but while he had at least a drop of strength…

He dragged the meat from the cleft up the slope, cursing through gritted teeth the stupid dragon who had too little brain to make his hole lower, where the ground was softer, cursing his stupid fate that drove him at the back of beyond, though his wise tutor said one can see God staying at home, cursing the heat. Meanwhile, the wonderer tied the bleeding slices into skins, put one of those bundles on his back, came to the dragon and went climbing up his huge green paw fearlessly. Clinging at bony plates, Oleg got up the beast’s back covered with thick shell. To Thomas, he looked like a crow on a plough horse: that kind is constantly ridden by both crows and rooks, which peck away horseflies and gadflies and even those white worms infesting poor animals under their skin in heat. Such horses would walk carefully, in order not to fright away the sharp-pecked strangers who eased their torments.

The wonderer fidgeted, settling in, tied the bundle quickly to the broad bony spike, yelled to Thomas. “Sir, I see all of it from here! Drag up the rest of meat!”

Thomas glanced back at the dragon’s huge snout: it lay on his paws, his eyes covered with the film of skin in sleep, his nostrils steamed. “Sir wonderer… Do you really want to ride him?”

“Ride?” Oleg asked with concern. “Serpents are not very good at running. So they would hide in caves and only steal the cattle at night for the first seven years. Until they have their wings.”

“Wings?”

“They are a bit better at flying than running,” the wonderer explained with a grimace.

Thomas, dumbfounded with all that happened, was dragging the last bundles of meat tiredly, giving them to wonderer who set them on dragon’s back: it had spikes, protuberances, slits between bony slabs, and the wonderer had made a real web of ropes with enough room for both men and meat. He walked on the dragon’s withers as though it were a barn roof. The dragon, drowsy after a hearty meal, paid him no more heed than a dog pays a fly. As Thomas served the meat, he kept glancing slantwise at the dark entrance to the cave from which the dragon leaned out. Some huge, scary shapes could be seen in there, the depth smelled strongly of scum, stagnant water, and frogs.

Suddenly the dragon stirred, opened his menacing eyes. He yawned, with his mouth opened wide, shut it with such a creepy thud that made Thomas’s blood run cold. These jaws can flatten a man in steel armor into a thin metal plate, reduce his bones to gruel… “Sir Thomas,” Oleg cried anxiously, “get up here!”

The dragon breathed steam out, started to creep slowly out of the cave. The stone ceiling screeched. The huge bony comb along the dragon’s back, which was pressed along to it within the dark cave, was standing up. “Sir Thomas!” Oleg shouted. “The dragon is about to fly!”

On both sides of dragon’s body, there were huge colorless logs of protruding bones, as long as ship masts, stretched with thick skin, while all the remaining skin was coiled in thick rings on the dragon’s long back, which seemed endless as the creature kept getting out. The wonderer sat only on his withers, and the dragon really was a giant long lizard…

“Fast!” Oleg yelled fiercely. “He’s flying up!!!” He leaned head down, holding with his feet, stretched his arm out. Feeling deathly cold in his stomach, Thomas clutched at the scaled log while it rushed by. He felt a jerk but held on while the log hit the ground, its claws, as large as knives, screeched on the stone. Thomas reached the wonderer’s hand, his face struck against the bony plate.

Oleg dragged the knight up, threw a belt around his waist, secured the other end to the comb and also, to make it more reliable, among bony spikes and protuberances. The crest on the dragon’s back kept unbending, as the dragon still crawled out of the cave: his sharp needles had made a cave in the ceiling. Thomas said loudly all the prayers he knew. As he knew only the first words of each one, he began them again and again. Finally, the crest got shorter, but the needles continued to the very tip. They were especially sharp and fresh there, as though the dragon’s tail was much younger than its owner.

The dragon crept up to the end of the stone ledge, leaned his head on flabby neck down, shook it sadly sideways. Oleg took out a dagger, stabbed it between the bony plates suddenly, leaned with all his weight on it. The dragon gave a piggish scream, fell from the steep, with just a scratch of claws on the stone. Big boulders went rolling down to the foot.

Thomas heard the air swish around. They were falling, in howling wind and cries of frightened birds. Thomas felt cold, dead, he already saw the spot on the stones where he would plop down, like a frog dropped by a stupid flying heron, with only a clang of armor… But then, suddenly, he was pressed on the bony plate with such force that his eyes popped out, his body got heavy, his jaw dropped (suddenly he imagined himself in the age of seventy).

He collapsed prone on the dragon’s back. The wind stopped swishing in ears, and Thomas heard another sound: mighty, broad flaps in the air, as though a storm wind blowing in a ship’s sail. Thomas closed his eyes and offered the Holy Virgin an ardent prayer for the sail enduring, as the loss of it is almost always fatal to sailors…

He was sprawled on the bony plate, shabby and scratched, whitened with rains, wind, and snow. The flapping stopped abruptly, as though cut away. The heaviness was gone, he heard a soft voice near his ear. “Just look…”

The blue sky was ahead, on the left and on the right, even behind them. Perplexed, Thomas looked at the white hill of wadding that floated in half a mile on the left, then realized with fear that was no wadding but a cloud! He turned to the right: a whole scatter of clouds and sharp rocky mountains far below. He saw thin strips of roads, tiny groves that looked like high grass — and the steppes beyond, scarily flat and deserted!

On the dragon’s both sides, huge leathery sails were spread, the thick skin on the bridges stretched as tight as on battle drums. The flying dragon looked like an old giant lizard with a bat’s wings. Thomas had once seen such a creature in his far journeys: that lizard leapt between trees, spreading its leathery wings, but it was the size of a pigeon while the dragon resembled a flying granary of a rich seignior.

Oleg prodded anxiously with dagger, searching for a weak spot. “Sparrows flap their wings often,” he said reluctantly, “and the bigger a bird, the more time it spends soaring. Eagles flap seldom.”

Eagles to this dragon, Thomas thought uneasily, are flies to a swallow. With his weight and colossal wings, he should ascend in several flaps and then soar for half a day with his wings spread out! “Will we fly where we need?” he asked in a shaky voice. “Or where the dragon likes to?”

Oleg shrugged. He was inspecting closely the gaps between bony slabs on dragon’s neck and withers. The wind ruffled the wonderer’s hair but his green eyes looked intently and seriously. “Once men raced on dragons. And combated! Until new gods came…”

Suddenly he gave a terrible scream. His face turned white as chalk, he fell on his back, twitching in convulsion, shaking, his eyes went mad. With a shout, he jumped off the dragon but ropes kept him on. The wonderer wheezed, his teeth bared in a beastly way. He started to untie hastily.

Thomas seized him by hand. “Sir wonderer! Sir wonderer!” Oleg flung him aside, growling. He had undone two knots, only the last one remained. Thomas gripped his friend with both hands, pressed to his own breast. “Sir wonderer!” he shouted in despair. “What happened? What’s the matter with you?”

With no word, the wonderer struggled away, growled, his lips foaming, his eyes mad. He tried to jump down again but the knot kept him, then he started to pull the ends, snarling. Thomas, seeing the death to both, seized him across his body, brought down, pressed on the bony plates, shouting in his face, “Sir wonderer! What’s on you? Tell me what to do!”

There was a brief glimpse of human mind in his mad eyes, a quiver of lips. Thomas heard his whisper. “The Seven…” Then Oleg growled again, wriggled, pushed Thomas aside with force that all but dislocated his shoulder. Thomas recoiled, the wonderer’s fingers dug into the last knot. Clenching his teeth, Thomas pulled out his sword, brandished overhead, brought the flat side down on the back of the wonderer’s head. Oleg collapsed silently, face first, into the slit in bony plates. Thomas tied his friend up quickly, hands behind, lest Oleg reach them with teeth, tied his feet tightly to the comb and protruding spikes on the dragon’s back.

The wonderer came back to himself, started to flutter. Thomas moved away with a sigh of relief. The dragon flapped twice, Thomas collapsed prone, but the leathery sails stretched out at once, crashing and rustling, and the world got still again. Thomas felt his stomach in his throat, his feet icy with terror. He glanced back timidly at the wonderer: Oleg roared and twitched in his bounds. The comb cracked menacingly, threating to rub the rope through. Thomas reached the wonderer, tied him with one more belt along his back, lest he take a firmer stand. He has monstrous strength. It will do to tear any rope. And those possessed are given strength by Devil himself!

Suddenly he felt the sun on his right cheek, though it had been on his left one before. The dragon seemed to have turned. Why not? He’s not longing for Krizhina, just soaring in search of a herd of fat cows to come down on them with a roar, to gobble those he snatches, to burn down the shepherd if that muddler fails to run away. “Sir wonderer,’ Thomas called in a shaky voice. “Oleg! Dear friend!”

The wonderer dropped saliva, his body contorted and writhing. He gnashed his teeth creepily, beat himself against the dragon back. Thomas clenched his teeth, trying not to look down: under the dragon’s belly, as white as a frog’s, there was a terrific abyss and the flat steppes floated in two or three miles below!

He drew his sword out, put it clumsily into the slit between plates, held his breath. The dragon made a full circle, with no move of wings, just rocking slightly in the warm rising flows of air. Thomas pressed cautiously on the hilt, ready to pull it out and recoil at every moment. Dragon kept soaring in the same idle way, in the warm summer air clean of dust and annoying flies, even the clouds under his belly as white as it was.

The sword got stuck, whether in gristles or small bones, so Thomas struggled to take it a scale closer to the neck, to the place where the wonderer had stabbed with his dagger. He had to redo the ropes. In times, the dragon started to flap wings, all of a sudden, jumped swiftly up into the sky, the cold wind made Thomas’s fingers numb and eyes water.

When he put the sword blade into the narrow slit between bony blocks, shabby, with broken edges, the dragon turned his head suddenly to give Thomas a close look. The knight’s hands got cold, fingers unclenched. Fortunately, he had the sword hilt tied to his hand, otherwise he’d have lost it. The dragon’s eyes were slowly becoming bloodshot, his breath puffed out of nostrils more often. In terror, Thomas realized the flying dragon could reach own back, as well as the tip of tail, with those awful jaws. No place to hide!

The dragon looked back again. With open jaws, he reached for Thomas, his neck bent creepily, bony scales screeching. Thomas backed in panics, the ropes stretched, keeping him in place. He felt a puff of stinky heat, as though fat carcasses were burnt in a huge stove.

He touched his sword helplessly, his fingers found some hairy thing. He pulled it, tore the rope off, flung the bundle into the mouth that had covered half the sky. The skin, with slices of meat rolled inside, plopped straight on the dragon’s tongue. The beast shut his jaws, moved them heavily to the right, then to the left, stretched reluctantly into a likeness of flying duck, soaring lazily, spreading his enormous wings that would do to cover any peasant’s field.

Thomas sobbed. His fingers trembled, heart pounded like a sheep tail. He sat like a mite on the back of most huge dragon… if even he swears it, no one would believe!.. flying over the clouds, his possessed friend rattling and wriggling in ties behind… What’s next? If the dragon wanted to gobble him, he would throw meat instead: that is what the wonderer prepared it for, but how long would that suffice? What if the dragon won’t land?

Thomas shrugged with a shiver: the constant head wind was really cool. Should I make the dragon land?

Trembling all over, with a dagger in hand, he peered into the slits between bony plates. In the middle of the back they were colossal: the dagger was too short to reach the vulnerable place with its point. He redid the knots, feeling like a nanny-goat on a tie, crawled on his fours to the neck, clinging at bony protuberances and holding his dagger in no knightly way at all — clenched in his teeth. Fortunately, no noble sir here to see me in such a humiliating pose. Though I’m on a dragon, not on a cow!

The dragon’s back went down abruptly, all of a sudden. Thomas clutched at the edge of the slab in panics. His body lost weight, all around the dragon went milky white at once, then the whiteness remained above: they were falling down like rocks. His heart stopped beating, wrung, as if it belonged to the most fearful hare frightened even by frogs.

Thomas clutched with all his might, feeling torn away from the solid surface, though that surface was also falling, falling, falling… A sudden resonant flap, and his chin hit against the surface that suddenly jumped up to meet him, with such a force that his fingers clanged like swords in battle. His mouth felt hot and salty, his head filled with lid, as well as his whole body. He was heavy, sprawled like a squashed frog, even his thoughts could barely stir, heavy and desperate. What all these torments for?

The wings flapped mightily for a long time. The dragon ascended in jerks. Thomas was now released, now pressed with force on the solid, his bones crushed, his body filled with heavy blood. The dragon must have been descending to the very ground, fascinated by some cow but scared away by either shepherd or errant knights. And now he must have decided to crush riders flat against the firmament!

As Thomas recalled his helpless friend, he glanced back, crossed him hastily. Oleg’s head hung helplessly, his chin rested on his chest, ropes had dug deeply into his mighty body. He was pale, flinching in times, groaning through gritted teeth.

“Be patient a bit,” Thomas said, choking with pity. “Once this winged frog stops turning head over heels… I’ll say a prayer for exorcism of devil. Or at least of demons. If only I recall it…”

One can hardly recall what one never knew. In terror, Thomas thought of a priest whom he needed to find as soon as possible: a priest to sprinkle the possessed with holy water, say a prayer, wave a censer of labdanum and incense, which Christ replaced the human sacrifice with. Well, I’ll see the church from a distance. But how to make dragon land before the priest’s house? He will definitely object to it. He belongs to impious pre-Christian world and can bear no sight of the Cross!

The dragon glanced back for a moment, then flew straight for a while, paying no heed to his riders. When he glanced back again, Thomas had crawled back and was undoing in hurry, breaking his nails, the knot on the closest sack of aurochs skin. “What an eater!” he said with loathing when the open mouth reached for him. “Too much food ruins your guts, as the wonderer says! I’d like you as a hermit.”

He flung three big slices in, one after another, and when he reached for the fourth one, the dragon turned away, screwing up his eyes with content. His jaws grinded the juicy boneless meat with a crunch, his lips foamed with blood, the wind tore it away and threw at the knight. Thomas wiped the sticky saliva off with disgust. moved away, closer to the wonderer. As he got tired of doing and undoing his ropes, he left only the thickest one around his waist. “Sir wonderer!” he called sadly. “Oh, sir wonderer…”

He hunched to save the last warmth, glanced at the wonderer with a heavy sigh, and went crawling, a dagger in hand that time, from the dragon’s withers to the neck. The long blade slid in between the scales, as thick as a fist, touched the stout skin. Thomas thrust it with more force, the skin tensed, the blade was thrown up. He recalled the wonderer, clenched his teeth, and leaned on the dagger with all his weight. The skin caved in a bit but endured. Thomas called the Virgin for help, cursed, hit the hilt with his iron fist.

The dagger went in for a palm deep, the dragon gave a shudder, his wings stirred a bit. Thomas clutched at the bony protuberances, ready for a fall, a dance in the air, but the dragon kept soaring in the same sleepy way, his broad wings spread wide. He warmed himself, catching sunrays with those huge dark sails. Even closed his eyes with joy, a brute.

Thomas clenched his jaws, banged the dagger hilt with all his force. There was a jerk beneath, Thomas would have flown off and down if not the rope. The dragon gave a hoarse cry, beat his wings frequently, turned around in a slanting arch, flapped his wings again. “That is it,” Thomas said exhaustedly, through gritted teeth. His breath was fast and sobbing, his teeth clanged, his hands shook like a hen thief’s. “They raced on dragons! And jousted, you see…”

The sun warmed his left cheek, but the dragon rocked in the flows of air more often, making Thomas clutch convulsively at bony ledges. He turned his eyes away in fright from the brim but could not forget the terrific void, which was straight under the dragon’s belly. He tried not to take his hands off. At every stir, he would clench his fingers and press his cheek on the crackling bony slab — one of those moving under him, rubbing, sliding apart. Once the dragon scratched himself as he flew: Thomas’s blood turned ice when, quite near him, the claws as large as Saracen swords scratched the side noisily, shaving the bony armor on it.

Thomas pulled out his sword in fear, started to prickle the dragon. The loathsome beast screwed up sweetly, stretched his neck. In fact, the knight was scratching him like a fat pampered boar. The sword blade made a tin screech on hard scales, each the size of a palm,

When the dragon flapped his wings suddenly — and he always did that all of a sudden — his body sank abruptly into the abyss, Thomas dropped his sword, gladly it was tied to his hand, and clutched at the bony back, like a mite, His heart and stomach climbed up to his throat, his eyes got covered with mortal agony, then a forceful flap of wings made him sprawl on the dragon back, like a frog filled with lid. He could not move even his smallest finger, his eyes all but burst with the rush of heavy blood.

Gradually, the dragon bore right. Cursing, Thomas made himself crawl up to the neck, drive the dagger in with force. The dragon gave a caw and turned, flapping his leather sails fussily.

Thomas crept back, keeping his eyes on the widening bone plates: the dragon’s neck was no thicker than a hundred-year-old oak, the fathomless void on both sides. Sitting on the broad withers, Thomas took a breath, tried to tame the shiver in his limbs.

Suddenly the dragon started moving his wings frequently, for no ascend but a rush forward, so swift that Thomas was all but blown off by the head wind, the ropes stretched and trembled. Pounding the air with dark sails, the dragon was coming upon a flock of white swans that flapped evenly their wings, huge and snow white. The last swan had no time to look over before the dragon opened his jaws and the swans were pulled into, one by one, no less than two score in total. Only the leader flying at the head of his flock managed to duck down, breaking away straight from the teeth, dropped a couple of tail feathers.

The dragon stretched his wings, soared happily, and followed the fleeing swan with hardly a glance: a lion pays that much heed to stupid goats when they literally step on the drowsy king of beasts after he had a hearty dinner. Thomas estimated the total weight of the flock. Obviously, the dragon had overeaten in hunting excitement, even his breath got heavy. No feeding for at least an hour.

He took a breath and, for the first time, dared to take his eyes off the scary horned snout. On both sides of the flying dragon, dense clouds slipped past. When sometimes the winged beast got higher, Thomas watched in astonishment the white field below, which looked like snowy. Sometimes the glutton of a dragon forgot to flap its wings, descended slowly, the wisps of mist went up on his sides. In times the mist was thick enough to hide the wings completely. Once Thomas glanced back and could not see the tail. The mist concealed even the dragon’s head, which was dangerously close: Thomas hurried to take a slice of meat out and held it in his outstretched arm. If he snaps, he’ll have my fingers, not all of me.

Dragon fell down from the clouds. Thomas could see valleys, sparse woods, silvery snakes of meandering rivers below. He felt a vague surprise at the Lord’s having set hills and dales and drawn rivers in such a fanciful way. Soon good mapping will cease, he thought anxiously. Dragons die out, stop breeding, and how’s a precise map is to be made if not from dragonback?

In times the dragon forgot to flap his wings at all. The ground came closer, Thomas crawled onto his neck and stabbed the dagger. Then the dragon would give a start, as though awaking, and flap his leathery wings in panics, like a hen flying from one fence onto another.

The ground went down swiftly, Thomas got sprawled. He was not trembling anymore, the seeds of admiration sprouted in his terror-stricken soul. A Christian, he got into Pagan world, which was only to be cleaned with sword and fire of witches, magic, dragons, brownies, trolls… And now this horned evil creature is likely to hit on the firmament, flatten the warrior of Christ into a wet spot on it. Thomas glanced above apprehensively, afraid of catching on the nails that keep the vault of heaven: their silver heads could only be seen at night…

Screwing up all of his courage, he took the risk of taking his hand off the protruding bony platen, patted caringly the bag on his belt, with a prominent side of precious cup within. God and Christ’s blood with us! If even the dragon was created by Devil, he now serves the good. The utmost power of Christ is that foe should not always be destroyed, all priests say that. The highest valor of the Crusader is to make enemy serve. And if killing a Saracen is not obligatory, killing a dragon is even less so. Beast is no human, it’s always innocent. Even the fiercest ones know not what they do. Even sharks are innocent, it was God who created them that way…

Thomas made a pinch of his fingers, going to cross furtively the back he sat on, but then hesitated. What if the creature of Devil blazes up with Hell’s fire and fells down like a torch? Angels may not catch the loyal warrior of Christ, as they are busy or fail to notice, Our Lady has a babe in arms, so I’ll plop down a mile or two and the cup rolls under somewhere again…

He undid the knots hastily, decided not to take out the cup but put his hand into. His fingertips felt a ticklish quiver, as though the prominent side recognized him, its true knight, and got warmer of his touch.

Thomas sighed, tied the rope up tighter, hunched and put his hands into armpits. The wind was chilling to the marrow, though his armor sheltered him like in a doghouse, but the blow came into slits and his skin was not as thick as dragon’s.

All the breadth of the sky was blue: on the right and left, ahead and behind. Far to the left, a line of geese flew past but the dragon was whether oblivious of them or full up. On the right, there also emerged some strange spot. Thomas was too chilled to watch it closely, but the spot approached and he saw a long carpet, painted with all colors, very hairy. In the middle of it, there sat a stooped man in turban. He was definitely cold too: hunched, wrapping himself in his colored robe. The carpet, twitching like a fat hairy caterpillar, crept almost in the same direction but the dragon was much faster. Thomas caught a glimpse of the tired swarthy face, as the man followed them with envious hopeless eyes. For a moment Thomas had a wish to show a rope end to him, as rude seaman did when outstripping another ship, but his natural knightly nobility was against vulgar gestures. What is more, his fingers were too frozen even to make a fig and could hardly hold a rope.

The man on the carpet was flying too low: several crows, cawing with malice, went chasing him, but the man only hunched up and stooped, pulling his robe over his cold ears. After the crows saw him off their territory, they left him, started to fly in circles, like proud eagles.

The dragon kept flying on and on. Thomas got tired, cold, and hungry as a hunter. The wonderer dropped his head, his chin rested on his chest, and hung there still. He was as deathly pale as before. Thomas turned away with a sigh again. Clutching at protuberances and falling sprawled under own weight was already habitual.

Chapter 37

That was how they flew until midday. The wonderer did not came to himself, though stopped writhing. Twice Thomas corrected the dragon who, like a horse with one blind eye, persisted in trying to turn and fly in a circle, but Thomas watched the sun: fortunately, the flight was above clouds most of the time. He adjusted for the moves of sun itself: by God’s decree, it rises on the east, creeps across the vault of heaven to the west, goes into the hole there to be dragged underground all the night long by damned sinners to the eastern edge of the earth. During the summer, sinners get tired, in autumn they move slower and slower and in winter — like sleepy flies. By spring, the patience of the Underground Lord runs out, so he hurls the draggers into Gehenna and harnesses fresh ones instead. Maybe the next team will include Gorvel and his Saracens.

The dragon turned his head only once. Thomas flung two slices deftly into the jaws and the third one missed: the dragon started to turn away at that moment. Thomas swore, following the heavy slice with regretful eyes. He felt a move in his stomach, a plaintive croak.

Thomas squirmed. Having a meal on the back of a flying dragon seemed rather stupid, but Thomas was really hungry and the bloody dragon’s champing made his mouth water.

He untied a sack, then a second one, found the bundle of aurochs livers. He took one of them out: quivering it was, as though still alive, and slick. He had to dig his fingers into the very bleeding middle lest he drop it. His teeth dug into the juicy flesh with a crunch, blood splashed out on his hands, but Thomas imagined himself in the native woods on the bank of Don. With my loyal suite, we would chase down a deer, cut him on the spot, throw guts to dogs, and divide liver among ourselves quickly, while it is warm!

He gave a start, all but dropped a slice when a hoarse voice said behind, “He’s gobbling… And the dragon?”

The wonderer raised his head. His eyes seemed reproachful, some strange sparkles glittered in them. Screaming happily, Thomas rushed up to his friend, tucked the liver into a slit on the go, lest the wind blow it away, seized him by tightly bound shoulders. “Sir wonderer! Are you… awake?”

“Did I snore?” the wonderer asked. His green eyes were clear, he looked attentively at Thomas, then at own body tied up tightly with ropes.

“Just a bit,” Thomas assured. “Though I and the dragon heard none of it.”

“Was it you to tie me?”

“Er… the dragon was busy. Flapping his wings. Our friends Seven of Secret have sent a bad dream on you, so I…”

Oleg nodded, winced. “Now their attack is gone. Untie me.”

Thomas looked with shining eyes, a load was taken off his mind, but his hands jerked away from the knots. “Are you sure… it won’t come back?”

Oleg shook his head. “Now I’m sure in nothing. But next time I will not allow to take me that sudden.”

“But you… Sir wonderer, don’t take it as offence, but how can I be sure you are not guided by them now? When demons possess a man, they can make him do what they like! Sometimes he does not even know he is possessed.”

Oleg kept his eyes, as green as usual, on Thomas. They were full of pain. “Sir Thomas, you deserve to be a leader of knightly detachment! I thought you were just a bold brass head, but you are no fool. And I am not possessed. I have no proof of it, but if you don’t untie me I will die soon of the stopping of blood. Your ropes are very tight, Sir Thomas.”

“You are too strong,” Thomas protested, feeling guilty. He hurried to undo the knots on the wonderer’s hands, and Oleg helped him to release the legs and body. Caringly, Thomas tied a thick rope around the wonderer’s waist, while the other end had been fixed beforehand on the comb. The wonderer only smirked, glancing at the knight with respectful surprise.

Wincing, Oleg rubbed his swollen arms, while Thomas kneaded his legs, blue of stopped blood. Once Thomas left it to feed the dragon. When he came back, the wonderer asked, with a mockery in his voice, “Why are you gorging on raw liver? Doesn’t your religion forbid to eat anything with blood?”

“I am Christian, no Jew,” Thomas replied with dignity. “Those are Jews to cut and throw away a slice of bread if a drop of blood from their own gums gets on it!”

“Ah, yes,” the wonderer replied tiredly, “I confused you Christians with Khazars… Sir Thomas, I’ve never seen such a bold man! Until I woke and saw you sitting on the dragon’s hump and gobbling the meat prepared for dragon!”

“I had no other thing to do,” Thomas said as his excuse. “The beast flies in right direction, you sleep. No women here, no wine, and far way to the tavern, while I am cold and scared…”

“Scared? Really?” Oleg wondered. His eyes were laughing.

“Really,” Thomas confessed, moved his shoulders with a shiver. “Those are you Pagans to see plenty of flying frogs, and I, a warrior of Christ’s host, am a stranger to this animal!”

“But you are sitting on his hump and gobbling.”

“A need will teach to pay no heed,” Thomas grumbled, “as one my friend from Scythia… er… Rus’ has once said.”

Oleg leaned back tiredly, resting his back on the broad comb, his face deathly pale still. “We have already made up for four days,” he said.

“Four?” Thomas was astonished. He went pink, a faint hope flattered in heart.

Oleg closed his eyes, like a dead tired man. “Look down…” he whispered. “We are flying over the loop of Don river.”

“Don?” Thomas started, unable to believe his ears. “I’ve never flied in these lands before, sir wonderer! I’m not used to recognize them form here above… yet.”

“Don… but neither Anglic nor Slavic… wherever Skolots, our common ancestors, passed they named rivers Don… that was distorted by present living nations into Dno, Dnieper, Dniester, Donegal…” His voice broke, he fell asleep in the middle of the word.

Thomas sighed with relief: he had no wish to confess that his neck had gone numb of superhuman efforts to keep the head straight, to avoid a look down, into that creepy abyss. Heart is scratching in boots, about to break out! The valiant sir wonderer hurried too much to praise him for boldness: how could he confess cowardice? I should hold the knightly honor high.

He kept glancing at the terrible horned head crushing through the air in some three or four score steps ahead. Is the dragon starting to turn head or that’s just my imagination? And why does the corner of his predatory mouth twitch?

The wonderer woke up an hour later. His face went pink, his lackluster eyes got some glitter in. His shoulders shivered with cold. “We should have taken a couple of blankets… Though we had none of those. Are we flying the same?”

“Northwest,” Thomas replied, struggling to restrain his ecstatic rapture that the wonderer was awake and available to take the bigger part of concerns on his shoulders.

“You know the map well,” the wonderer told him with respect.

“I have no need of petty maps,” Thomas replied haughtily but felt the hot blood rushing up to his cheeks and stooped hastily to redo the knots on the sacks of meat. “I look at the sun!”

“Sir Thomas, you are a real match for ancient heroes who flew dragons!” Oleg admired.

“Did they… fight mounted on dragons, like on horses?”

“Exactly!”

With a shudder, Thomas looked at the back of dragon’s head. He remembered that snout and those teeth. “Why did they stop it?”

Oleg thought for a while, waved away uncaringly. “People changed… Meanwhile, dragons are just big frogs with wings: drowsy while replete and grabbing everyone without choosing when hungry. They can’t discern allies and foes in the battlefield.”

The dragon made a sudden steep turn. Cursing, Thomas stabbed at the slit between slabs with his sword habitually, held Oleg who leaned all his weight upon him. “I fed this fool too well! He’s frisking…”

Oleg kept glancing at the angry knight silently. The dragon made a couple of flaps, spread his wings to the full again. Thomas screamed, went crawling on the withers to the dagger stuck between plates: the sun shone straight into his eyes.

When he leveled the dragon and returned to the wonderer, they cuddled each other to keep the last warmth. Thomas thought of a tent. No. Wind will blow it away like a flake, and we miss the moment when dragon gets hungry. Involuntarily, he touched the sacks of meat.

“It’s cold,” Oleg said sleepily, “so he eats often. In heat, once a day is enough. And one bull.”

When it started to get warmer, which meant the ground close, the dragon flapped its wings fiercely, and Thomas, with his teeth clenched habitually, clutched at the horny excruciations. At every flap his numb fingers all but unclenched, he was now thrown up, now pressed into the bony back with force that made his eyes pop out like a lobster’s. His guts were squeezed outside, his fingers almost flattened… before his legs were torn away and he hung on the fingertips and the rope, alerting beforehand, as the next moment the dragon would jerk up and Thomas be flung down on his hard back.

Finally, the wings stretched to the full, unfolded like an elephant’s ears. Thomas was not hurled, like a frail ship in storm, anymore. Oleg waited till it was over humbly, as he was a wonderer and hermit. Thomas sighed with relief and crossed himself, watching over his invisible cross staying off the flying beast. “It’s better ahorse,” he sighed drearily. “The earth is holy… and so solid!”

“And afoot, a staff in hand?” Oleg added. “You walk slowly enough to see even bugs and butterflies, these God’s creatures. Greet the passers-by, think of the Great Truth… The God’s world is around: steppes, woods, fields, cows…” He wiped off his tears caused by biting head wind.

Thomas at last started glancing down, into the fathomless abyss where green bumps of mountains moved very slowly, all but standing still. He clenched his teeth, asked in a shaky voice, “Are you sure we made up for four days?”

Oleg stretched his neck, all but leaned over the dragon. “Five,” he said thoughtfully. “And started the sixth day.”

“Sixth?” Thomas gasped.

“The dragon rose very high,” Oleg explained. “The dark spot moving over there is a nomadic tribe, either Polovtsians or Kumans, of Khan Kotyan. And our dragon looks either a lark or a falcon to them…”

Suddenly the giant head turned, looked at Thomas with creepy eyes, each the size of a basin, a dim glitter of bony excruciations over them, puffs of steam bursting out of nostrils with noise. The dragon flung open his broad jaws, his palate and tongue a bright purple blaze framed with sugar-white teeth. Thomas was carried away by the sight of the creepy tunnel of red throat, with a wet slimy glisten of its walls.

He felt a push on shoulder, glimpsed the wonderer’s hand with a slice of meat. A crash of colliding rocks, and the tunnel vanished. Thomas was faced by a dull snout of either lark or falcon. Jaws moved for a while, then the mouth opened even wider. Thomas regained his senses, threw several slices in, and the dragon turned away majestically, while he continued to grind his food evenly, like a cow grinds its cud. “Isn’t it great?” Oleg asked with gloomy fun.

“A magnificent beast,” Thomas answered earnestly. “What wonders can the Lord create! And that’s not the most… In my journeys, I’ve seen really wonderful monsters! One of them as tall as three bulls standing on each other, but five times as heavy as those, his ears hanging on both sides, like leather cloaks, and fangs in his mouth — would you believe it? — as long as my arm, and his nose longer even than a gut. With that gut, he plucks branches to gorge! Picks things up from the ground without stooping and gorges them too! Would you believe that?”

“The world is rich of wonders,” Oleg replied.

“But the most wonderful is that local people went farther than those great heroes of yours! They can ride those animals, plow on them, drag huge stones and thick logs. Beasts are kept in the same way our peasants keep cows or horses: in barns, enclosures, pastures. And they are not feed in plenty — just enough to prevent death of starving.”

Beneath them, bony plates rubbed against each other, cracked and crunched. Oleg put his hand into a slit between bony slabs that had once been scales, to warm his numb fingers: the dragon’s back was warm. He heard wheezing and rattling sounds beneath: the dragon must have caught a chill in his cold damp cave. At a halt, it will be good to make potion of herbs and roots… er… trees and shrubs to cure the animal. Though no need of him tomorrow, we may just let him go, but one should return good for good even to a beast. It is entrusted by old gods.

The sun started sinking to the west, and the dragon was flying evenly the same. Thomas wondered how long he would keep flying, any bird would have allowed a rest by that time, but the wonderer could not reply: he was sleeping, leaned on the comb. His invisible battle against the Secret Lords of the World was really hard.

Thomas spotted the first anxious move of the rollers of dragon’s ears. Once the dragon turned his head, Thomas started to fling slices of meat into his jaws, aiming straight into the gaping tunnel of throat. Maybe his windpipe is there too. Will he choke or not?

The dragon only resembled a lark in his eating while flying, and the huge slices of meat to him were the same as flies to a lark. The wonderer woke up, set to helping the knight at once, though Thomas did not seem to consider his work disgraceful: even kings in times would feed and wash their warhorses themselves and dragons, as he believed the wonderer, once were war mounts. “Sky… lark,” Thomas breathed out when another slice went into dragon’s mouth.

“Who?” Oleg wondered.

Thomas hurled another blooded slice. The dragon finally turned away, with his cheeks swollen. “A falcon hunts in the sky but he eats on the ground. And we are throwing flies to a skylark.”

Oleg hemmed, wiped his palms on the bony plate. There was a constant move beneath, as though Thomas and Oleg sat on flock of migrating turtles.

“We only have meat for one feeding!” Thomas reminded anxiously.

“Let him chew that,” Oleg replied with discontent. “Gorged like a hamster. We can see his cheeks from behind!”

The dragon’s cheeks were bulging. He chewed evenly, the wind blew saliva off the corner of his mouth, Oleg recoiled in time, and the basket-sized drop plopped down on the knight. Cursing, he started to disentangle from the sticky slime, completely oblivious, in his fury, of the dragon’s flapping wings again in a swift ascend. “Isn’t that beast tired?”

“Don’t know,” Oleg replied warily. “I haven’t flown for a long time.”

“I look after my horse,” Thomas reproached. “When winded, he’s no fit for a saddle.”

“I have no horse,” Oleg growled. “We should take care of our soul! But we put it the last.” Nevertheless, he looked with doubt at the dragon’s stretched neck. The beast was flying in a crane way: legs tucked up, while the neck and combed tail stretched in a line. “Night is soon,” Oleg said unwillingly. “Need to find a place to spend it. And let the beast take a breath. He may be like a horse that falls dead at a tilt!”

Thomas looked down apprehensively. Wooded hills under them looked like some marsh hummocks. “How to make him land?.. I’ve only flown down from a horseback. And once from a tower — a stone tower of forty feet! Down on the stone-paved square, in my full armor.”

Oleg gave the knight a respectful glance, climbed up to Thomas’s dagger, stabbed in a different place. “Hey, Skylark! Get down to the grass. The one we call a forest.”

The dragon uttered a shrill scream, made a sharp turn aside, as though a fish in water, folded his wings suddenly and dropped — like no stone but a whole rock! — down. Thomas’s heart stopped beating, his legs and bottom came off the dragon back. He hung in the air, with only the rope to keep him. Their fall got faster and faster, the air swished and screeched around.

Oleg pulled the knife out hastily, his face went white. He stabbed in a different slit, the dragon made a slight turn but kept falling like a rock that slipped off the mountain top. The ground rushed to meet them, tiny houses were sprouting up, dark points turned mice, then cows.

Thomas struggled his heavy head up, saw the tops of trees darting by, very close. The dragon flew over the forest, his wings spread, a huge ugly shadow rushed before him. Then there was a broad glade, even a small field, all in sticking stumps and gaping pits. The dragon was driven straight onto the stubs. Thomas felt sick, closed his eyes, and pressed himself into the slits between plates.

The back beneath them suffered a sudden terrible jerk. The wonderer swore through gritted teeth. Thomas was hit in face, his mouth filled with blood. The rope almost tore him in halves but kept. Thomas opened one eye. Trees were darting past him in ten steps, as dragon ran on the ground, with his wings advanced to reduce the speed, his breath rattling and sniffling, his nostrils steaming. His wings lowered gradually, with a dry rustle, and folded.

Oleg cut the rope with a single move. Thomas gripped a bony protuberance with both hands, his feet clung at another one. If he had no helmet with lowered visor on, he would have also clutched at the dragon’s withers with his teeth. Oleg moved his lips apart. Well done, knight, you hold like a mite on a young goat. He clapped Thomas on shoulder.

Thomas suddenly came off the solid back, turned twice while rolling down a slope, at last hit the ground and remained lying there, with his arms wide spread, staring vacantly in the evening sky.

The wonderer’s anxious face emerged over him. “Sir Thomas! Are you all right?”

“I am,” Thomas croaked. “But for my being completely well, this damned skylark should have not hatched out!”

“Are you hurt?” Oleg gasped. “I seemed to hear of you falling down from a forty-feet tower. In full armor, into a stony yard.”

“I did fall!” Thomas snapped. “But not from the very top! I climbed just three feet up before they pushed me off.” Moaning, he got up, glanced back at the grey-green hill of a dragon. The animal had his head advanced and laid on the ground. His eyes were dark with tiredness, his wings, which had pushed the knight off so uncaringly, lay on his back like old sails, the comb completely covered by them. The long tail was still, only the very tip twitching a bit, the sharp needles on the comb were lowered and stiffened.

Thomas moved his shoulders, the bones crunched, as though the dragon had chewed him instead of meat and spat out.

“I gather brushwood, and you feed the beast,” Oleg suggested.

The sacks lay where they fell, thrown off the back by wings, in two score steps, behind the tip of dragon tail. Thomas measured that flying lizard with his eyes, counted about forty feet from tail to head and over forty-five the other way round. “May I gather it?”

“You said you used to feed and clean your horse!”

“Cleaning this? I’d rather make three fires.”

Oleg, with no burden of armor on him, dragged the remaining sacks up quickly. The dragon opened one eye a bit, sighed with grief. Oleg knocked impatiently with the toe of his boot on the lower jaw, as though on a door of inhospitable hut. Lazily, the dragon opened his mouth a bit. Oleg tried to squeeze the whole sack of meat through but failed, so he shook the meat out before the monstrous mug. Huge nostrils started to move, then stretched, got wide like foxholes. Oleg shoved the blooded slice into tightly clenched lips. Reluctantly, the dragon moved his jaws apart. Oleg thrust the rest of the meat into with force, the mouth closed, and the tired dragon fell asleep, with his cheeks swollen like a thrifty hamster’s.

Thomas kindled a bonfire, making it providently behind the trees, in case if dragon does not like the smoke. When Oleg came back after a short hunting, the kettle was boiling with water. The bigger twigs had burnt down, crimson coals twinkled invitingly.

Thomas took two hares from the wonderer, shook his head. “I thought we have the aurochs liver… How much you eat. Though a hermit!”

“We shouldn’t eat the dragon out,” Oleg explained. “We have nothing to feed him tomorrow. Have you thought of it?”

Thomas disemboweled the hares, threw one into the boiling water and resolved to roast another one on coals, which he, to tell truth, had prepared for that matter, as he knew the wonderer. “And you?”

“There are whole herds grazing in the steppes.”

They had their meal in silence, tired, though all the day long they did nothing but sat on the flying dragon. Thomas was first to hear the dry thuds of unshod hooves, threw his spoon aside, gripped his sword. Oleg finished the soup hastily, got up too. The bow and arrows were on his back, his sheathed sword by the fire.

Some mounted men rode out onto the glade: short, neatly built, with black hair and black eyes. Each one has a bow behind, a strange felt hat on his head. Their horses are rather small but look hardy and evil. Thomas counted twelve of them, and a dense wall of riders that could be discerned at a distance…

The men raised their hands, cried something out in guttural voices. One of them dismounted, walked forward slowly, advancing his palms. Oleg nodded Thomas to stay in place, walked slowly to meet the man. Thomas, with his hand on the hilt of huge sword, watched Oleg tensely. The latter came up fearlessly to the black-haired man who was all but a head shorter, they spoke in low voices. The black-haired man pointed at the riders, even moved his hand in the direction of those behind the trees, told Oleg something in a fast guttural voice, with several nods at the dragon: he slept at the other end of the glade, his mighty breath bending the trees before, their leaves had fallen down of his loud snoring.

Oleg glanced back and shouted. “Sir Thomas! Have your rest. I’ll go round to the nomad camp. Get to know news. I haven’t been to Rus’ for a long time, and they ride just from there.”

“Are you safe?” Thomas cried anxiously. “Aren’t they Polovtsians?”

“They are,” Oleg replied. “Kumans! Those Polovtsians who become our friends get the name of Kumans. When I am back, I’ll tell you more.”

A horse in ornate harness, in a colored horsecloth with gold embroidery, was led up to Oleg. The black-haired man pointed at Thomas with finger, Oleg shook his head negatively. He jumped into the saddle with no touch to stirrups. “When are you back?” Thomas cried in fear.

“In the morning,” Oleg replied. “You sleep!” He urged his horse, the riders galloped to meet the long shadows. Evening came fast: before the sun sank beyond the horizon completely, the glittering moon was followed by first stars. The sky went dark, studded with stars from end to end: not that bright as those in Jerusalem, but sharp and prickly. We need to fly with care tomorrow, not get too high, lest we get our backs cut on those sticking nails.

He woke as though pushed. There were distant voices, anxious horse snorting. Thomas snatched the sword from under his head. Half-awake, he took a fighting posture, as he’d just dreamed of the attacking chivalry of Saracen.

In the pale light of dawn, some scores of men were bustling about the edge of the glade. Thomas smelled fresh blood. One of them was distinctive by his stature and broad shoulders. When he turned, Thomas recognized the wonderer.

Oleg waved his hand. “Good morning… Sir Thomas…” His voice was feeble, he staggered, but the others riders seemed to be treating him with friendly respect/ Thomas lowered his sword. Soon after, all of them save the wonderer jumped on their horses and galloped away, while the wonderer dragged himself to the dying fire, by which the noble knight had taken his firm stand.

Thomas gasped. The wonderer looked exhausted, hardly able to drag his feet. His face had become yellow, his eyes glassy, his lips dry. He trudged up to the fire and collapsed. He obviously felt frozen. Hurriedly, Thomas threw some dark twigs on the dark crimson coals, blew on them, bulging his cheeks. A whole cloud of ashes flew up, sprinkled the knight all over, but the coals flared with bright orange flames, which leaked the twigs and the fire blazed up.

Oleg jerked his shoulders, his eyes seemed to be closing by themselves. “I’m getting too old for such things… But nothing to be helped. I’m Pagan. A man of that old, cruel world…”

“What,” Thomas cried in fear, “did those animals do to you?”

Oleg moved his hand, spoke in a lifeless voice. “There’s meat of young cows. A present… Drag it up — I can’t even stir my finger.” His head dropped, he fell asleep while seated. Thomas, trembling with both pity and fury, ran up to the presents and checked them: forty sacks of juicy meat, five that number they took with them the last time. And some bunches, sweet-scented herbs. The meat is also interlaid with fragrant leaves and whitish roots.

Clenching his teeth, he fed the dragon quickly: first threw the biggest slices into hungry jaws, then forced the smaller ones into the mouth until the dragon growled and covered his snout with paws. Thomas dragged the rest thirty-nine sacks onto the back of replete dragon, tied them doubly tight to the comb along it, stretched two rows of ropes to walk. or at least crawl, along, put the rest of the fire down quickly, packed the kettle into empty sack.

The wonderer was sitting in the same pose, his chin rested on the chest. In times he gave a snort or a start. Keen over the tormented man, Thomas lifted him up, shouldered and carried carefully to the dragon who was also sleeping, full up.

When he was tying the wonderer as tight as possible, lest he be blown off at flying up, Oleg came to himself and muttered, “Thank you, Sir Thomas… You are true friend… And me too…”

“What was it there?” Thomas asked quickly.

The wonderer’s lips made a sluggish move. “Wild people, you see? They have wild customs… But I’m no Christian to recognize only the customs of my own. When in Rome, I do as Romans do…” He tried to get asleep.

“Were you tortured?” Thomas asked, ready to tear the wild Polovtsians with his bare hands for their satanic deeds.

“Oh yes, I was… I said I’m getting old for such rites… All the night long — only naked girls! Singing, dancing, snuggling… I lost the count of them after the first two scores. This is the land where Targitai managed his thirteenth feat! Their chieftain wanted to say girls to you, I hardly reasoned him out… They don’t know, wild men, that you are Christian and made a vow of fidelity to beautiful Krizhina…”

“What custom is that?” Thomas asked, dumbfounded.

“They are wild, I say… Bring their most beautiful virgins for night to those considered heroes. To improve the breed!.. And now we come flying on a dragon… So they made every effort! Once I’ve thought it was over with girls but then saw them dragging new ones from the camp, in such a hurry! When they grasped I was capable of nothing more, the chieftain wanted to send them to you again… I all but scuffled with him. Fool, he knows no principles of Christianity… And I had to accept those ones myself too…”

Thomas darkened, said through gritted teeth in a strange voice, “Thank you, sir wonderer! I’ll never forget this service.”

“Always… for friend…” Oleg went snoring, hung in the ropes like a cheap doll with its sawdust out. Furious, Thomas even forgot he did not knew how to raise the dragon into air. Cursing the Kumans and his noble friend, he woke the dragon, made him take a run, and once the dragon jumped up Thomas turned him northwest.

The wonderer woke up for a moment, mumbled with his eyes closed. “Sir Thomas, you here?.. Don’t forget to feed Skylark… or he gobbles us both. I’ll have a little sleep, well? Don’t forget to scratch: the fresh scar on the left of his withers is itching. And tap him between ears with butt — he loves it… If I don’t wake till noon, you awake me…”

He fell silent, his jaw dropped again. To Thomas, he looked like a corpse who gave his life to thirty or some other number of virgins, as he lost count of them before, and then accepted even those whom the chieftain of Kumans was sending him, Thomas Malton, who had seen no petticoat for several months by that time!

Damned Pagan, Thomas said angrily. I need to discuss the principles of Christianity seriously with him when I have an opportunity. Fool, he does not understand that only Pagans have their soul and body as a whole, as though white and yellow clay mixed up in the same basin. And Christians have soul separate from body: carnal values and spiritual values. Soul cannot respond for carnal joys, as body is sinful and soul is godly! No sin — no repentance, no repentance — no salvation. And if the Pagan understood nothing, as the doctrine of Christ was for selected few, Thomas would tell him resolutely and firmly to leave the judgment of Christian values to him. Just look at this goer-in-everything-himself! Smells like a barrel of wine. Must have drunk for two of us as well, a viper…

Chapter 38

The wonderer was asleep so fast that could hardly be awaken not only by dinner but by supper. Well if he wakes at dawn… Thomas sighed, took the dagger. The plates beneath him were moving, coming close, rubbing against each other creepily. Once their collision made a bony splinter to flew apart and hurt his cheek bleeding. He touched the scratch, asked Our Lady in a whisper to leave that small scar be. Later, back in Britain, he would swear on the Holy Book, the Nail of the Cross of the Lord and anything else they would offer him that he got that wound from a dragon as large as a mountain!

Obeying the prick, dragon turned northwest, and Thomas stiffened of waiting again. Gradually, he accustomed himself to glance down. Though his soul would froze with bodily fear each time, he could watch the migrating masses of mounted hosts, countless herds. Sometimes he spotted white tents: Polovtsians build no cities, as the wonderer had told him, only ruin and destroy the cities of others, live in yurts and covered wagons. They cross streams on the go and wade across large rivers. Only once Thomas saw them swimming across a broad river: the water was scattered with the points of swimmers, with many rafts of logs and clusters of empty leather skins tied together among them.

Far below the dragon’s belly, rives and groves floated by. As close Thomas peered, he could see not a single city, either big or small, no village, no hamlet, not even a tiny settlement of one or two houses: only hooded carts of nomads surrounded by numerous herds of cattle and horses.

At noon Thomas woke the wonderer up gloatingly, as he had asked for it. Almost at the same time, the dragon had a wish to eat, and the half-awake wonderer together with the knight flung fat slices of meat hastily into the red furnace. The dragon kept chewing. Finally, he turned away, but then decided to fill up the cheek pouch on the other side. Thomas pretended not to notice it, the wonderer threw bleeding slices up alone, then wiped his hands for a long time on the lifted comb that looked like a tall bony fence of sharp stakes.

By evening Oleg made the dragon descend. They landed on the bank of a narrow river that ran jumping on stones, its bed cut in the crumbling rocks, so unusual in the steppes, as flat as an endless table.

That time Thomas jumped off a moment before the huge wings folded with a thundering sound on the back, pressing down the bristled comb. He rolled over head, his iron clanging, all but ran into own sword. The wonderer followed the dragon who lay down on the bank and lapped the water greedily. Oleg shook out meat from two sacks near the awful snout.

Thomas limped into shrubs to gather brushwood, as the sun was sinking to the horizon. When he came back with a first armful, a tiny fire already burnt on the bank: the wonderer lit it on dry grass blades and wooden splinters washed ashore by waves. In hundred steps upstream, there were loud splashes, hits on water, as though the river was battered with logs. The dragon, after having gobbled half of the meat and thrown the rest around swinishly, sat up to his belly in the water, almost blocking the river, his outspread wings bent by the current. The seething water ran over wings and paws, with spikes looking out of the foam, like sharp pales in the city wall. The dragon bowed down to the very water, peered very closely in, holding his breath, then suddenly stroke with both paws, raising a cloud of spray. Thomas dropped dry twigs with a crash, glancing apprehensively at the strange animal. “What’s he doing?”

“Fishing,” Oleg muttered.

“Are you jesting?.. Fish to him is small like flies to you.”

“Or you,” Oleg parried. “Do you only hunt for food? Or for the joy of it too?.. Dragon has a pleasure to recall his childhood. When he was small, he lived in water… Fish was a match to him then. A match or bigger.”

The dragon jumped with squeaks. His fat bottom twitched, prominent frog eyes flashed. His forepaws were groping under the water, his claws so wide apart and out at full length that it all but made Thomas’s legs give way, and own armor seemed to the knight no thicker than maple leaves. “Probably,” Oleg said, thinking of some other matters, “he is small still… Dragons live for thousands of years. The one two hundred years old is a teenager…”

The teenager, with a terrible scream that made the banks tremble, was pulling out of the water some fluttering log with fins, Oleg hardly recognized a sheatfish in it. Backing, the dragon stepped on his own tail and fell but kept the sheatfish, floundered with it in the water for a while, raising clouds of spray and shaking the ground, flung it hastily far away on the bank and rushed to the river again. He bustled about, with a passion of hunting, plunged his head into the water up to the ears, peering at the rocky bottom, and when a strong wave rolled overhead he did not recoiled in fear but plunged deeper in excitement: only his spread comb and fat bottom remained over the water.

Twice he threw on the bank a hundred-year-old pike, which looked like a green mossy drowned log, while the miraculous sheatfish, a giant Oleg had never seen before, was writhing heavily, bending, sliding gradually down the slope to the water. The dragon jumped fussily, spanked with giant paws, trying to claw the prey, snatched it with jaws. Meanwhile, the sheatfish, feeling the water close, bent his body twice with its last strength and its tail, forked like a mermaid’s, touched the water. The sheatfish leapt in the air, plopped down into the shallow water, and crawled on, winding his body and leaving a deep trench, which was buried with sand immediately. The sheatfish was getting deeper with every moment. Finally, the wave was cut by a dorsal fin, which looked like a small dragon’s comb. It darted to the middle of the river and vanished.

“Fool,” Oleg grumbled. He fingered his charms, casting vacant glances at the dragon’s comb spread with excitement. “His pikes are also creeping to water… What an offended roar he will make!”

“May I keep the pikes?” Thomas said anxiously, but Oleg heard sympathy in the knight’s voice too. “We’ll need less meat for him.”

“Keep them,” Oleg growled. His eyes were vacant, he kept fingering charms, his lips moved, whispering either prayers or spells.

Thomas rushed to the fishing spot, not afraid of the wet dragon: no savage beast anymore but a fervent fisher whom the knight could understand as he was one himself. With effort, he dragged the heavy pikes far from the water. Wet and covered with slime, they writhed fervently, snapped with toothy jaws. Thomas had a hard time helping the luckless fisher: the pikes turned out to be tenacious of life, though both had marks of claws on their heads. When he tried to grab the first one by tail (it was dangerous to seize by gills a creature with crocodile jaws and inch-long teeth), the pike’s mighty jerk threw him down on the ground, with an iron thunder, the wet sand mixed with fish slime hurled into his eyes. Swearing like a Templar, he stunned both with his iron fists, finishing the dragon’s work, dragged them on the dry as far as he could.

The dragon got out, put his paws apart, shook himself like a dog. Crayfish and pebbles flew in all directions, along with clouds of sand and water. He had the third pike clenched in teeth. He trotted on the bank merrily, a mischievous glitter in his eyes, even the mails on his snout a bit apart. As he spotted Thomas dragging a pike away by tail, he stopped abruptly. The lower jaw dropped, the fresh-caught pike plopped wetly down on the ground, leapt twice, splashed into the shallow water near the bank, its body bent forcefully once more and darted into the depth.

Thomas dropped his pike, cowered low of the terrible roar. The dragon yelled, making the ground tremble, trees bend, and leaves fall on the ground as though from shaken branches. His eyes got creepy and bloodshot, the huge comb reared from the withers to the tip of his tail.

The wonderer glanced back at the roar. “What’s up him?” Thomas cried to him in fear.

“Where did you put sheatfish?” Oleg cried back.

“He thinks I ate it?”

Oleg stood up, cupped his hand at his forehead. “Where’s it then?”

“I didn’t touch it at all!” Thomas shouted in fury.

Oleg watched him with great doubt. “And where were you dragging that pike?”

Suddenly the dragon rushed forward, in short, fussy jumps. His eyes were fixed on Thomas, jaws started to open, with a glitter of teeth. Thomas stood as though enchanted, watching the horrible beast coming on him, when a desperate scream cut his ears, “To the cleft! The cleft near you! On the left!!!”

Obeying, Thomas jumped to the left, over a fat pike, fell into the cleft, rolled away from the entrance. At once it went dark, the rock trembled of a heavy blow, the awful roar of frantic dragon slashed his ears. The beast tried to shove his snout into the narrow slit, bellowed of disappointment. Thomas clung fast into the corner, out of his strength, gasping for air the stink of dragon’s breath, his head cracking of the terrible roar.

When the dragon fell silent for a moment, drawing in the air for next scream, Thomas jerked his head up, looked around. He was trapped, no other way out. The dragon gave a dreadful roar, tried to put his paw into the cleft. Thomas felt his hair stirring under the helmet, as the monstrous claws scratched the stone floor in just a step. Somehow the dragon managed a turn, his claws all but reached the knight. Thomas flattened himself on the wall, watching with terror the paw scratching stone in two inches from his leg. He glanced back in despair, but that cave was a solid stone hollowed out: no chink for a mouse to get in or out!

When Thomas could not anymore discern whether it was dark of the beast’s body screening the light or the starry night sky, he tried a look out. He barely had time to recoil: the monstrous paw covered the cleft immediately, pebbles crunched on the diamond-hard claws. The horrible animal kept guarding his prey!

He heard steps, then the wonderer’s sleepy, yawning voice. “Is that you, Sir Thomas?.. Sleep if you must. Let dragon cool down. Don’t re-open his sores.”

“Sir wonderer!” Thomas cried nervously. “I give the word of noble knight’s honor: I didn’t touch that sheatfish!”

The dragon growled menacingly on the other side of the cleft. A monstrous paw screened the stars, hit on the crevice with a thunder. Small pebbles rang on the knight’s armor. Thomas recoiled.

He heard the wonderer’s voice, peaceful and comforting. “I believe you, actually… Though the sheatfish did disappear…”

“You think,” Thomas cried in terror, “I ate that rotten sheatfish?”

“Sir Thomas!”

“Well, no rotten, I was carried too far about it… But I am a paladin of Crusade, noble Sir Malton…”

“In the excitement of hunting… er… A noble passion… But I said nothing of you having eaten it. Though both of us, dragon and I, saw you stealing the pike.”

“Stealing?”

“Everyone has his weaknesses, sir knight. Everyone is sinful, God forgive them. And the dragon… he will forget if not forgive.”

“Forget?”

“Dragons have memory like a sieve,” Oleg explained. The dragon’s roaring was all the softer, as though he tried to fathom the meaning of human words or the wonderer scratched him behind ears. “In the morning he can’t recall the day before. So he’ll forget you making off with his sheatfish.”

“I didn’t touch it!”

“Er… he, as well as I, saw you dragging away his pike. Probably he has seen even more of it. We Rodians consider it a sin to deceive even a beast, but you Christians have nothing in the way it’s supposed to be…”

He heard the wonderer settling by the distant fire, which crackled with coals in silence. Lately, Thomas recalled the wonderer, though immersed in his deep thoughts, could have seen the sheatfish getting into the river by itself. Oleg had even advised him, Thomas Malton, to save pikes for that ungrateful fool! But now the wonderer could hardly be reached by Thomas’s cries: he slept like a log, while the dragon breathed evenly at hand, as though a heavy tide coasting in: it only filled the cave not with fresh sea breeze but with a heavy smell of rotting meat stuck in dragon’s teeth. Thomas could see not a single star: the beast leaned his side on the cleft, blocking the way out even in his sleep.

Slowly, Thomas slid down the wall on the floor, trying not to ring his armor. The dragon’s snoring was even and mighty. Unwittingly, Thomas lapsed into a short and troubled dream, as he thought it to be.

Thomas woke of the bright sun shooting its fiery arrows straight in his eyes. He heard splashes, roaring, mighty slapping on water from outside his small cave.

Slowly, with apprehension, Thomas came to the entrance. The dragon was fishing excitedly in hundred steps from the cave, and the wonderer, naked to the waist, sat by the dead fire, which was only a black burnt circle in place of coals. He was doing a diligent needlework on the wolfskin jack lying on his laps.

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas called quietly from his cleft, “good morning!”

“Morning,” the wonderer answered vacantly. His eyebrows were knitted on the bridge of his nose. “How have you slept?”

“Thanks,” Thomas replied politely. He moved out a bit, measured the distance towards the excited fisher with his eyes. “How is our horse?”

“Skylark? He seems to be well. Fishing till dawn. They say it’s really the best time for fishing.”

“It is,” Thomas confirmed respectfully. “But what about the sheatfish?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Thomas came out of the cleft. “Sir wonderer,” he spoke with dignity, “in your godly thoughts, you have missed it were you who advised me to help poor animal save his fish! Well, for my kind deed… as my friend pilgrim of Rus’ would say, my lard was spread on my own skin!”

The wonderer lowered his needle, his eyebrows flew up to the middle of his forehead. “Really?.. I have some vague memories of that. It seems you truly haven’t stolen that sheatfish… Indeed, that would be too much even of a Christian. Though sheatfish did vanish… Well, well, let’s leave it. God sees everything, especially your Christian god spying on everyone, jealous of no leaf to fall without his will, not a single hair of one’s head…”

Thomas approached the fire, nodded at the humped back with reared comb. “Won’t he devour me?”

The wonderer thought for a while, scratched the back of his head with five, shrugged. “Off chance he won’t.”

Doomed, Thomas sat down near the wonderer. “Off chance,” “we must go,” “it will come right,” and also “kusim,” a mysterious spell with which the wonderer went right through it and won. Thomas tried to say that magic formula secretly himself, but it had no effect on him, the knight of West: one definitely needed to have a mysterious Russian soul, which is not to be measured against other men’s yardsticks, to say “off chance” and go on with a blind faith in own good luck…

The dragon darted suddenly along the bank, jumped up to a steep. Sitting in the hollow water, he started to claw out clots of yellow clay, with pebbles and grass, snatch them with huge jaws, swallow hastily, tear out new ones, trying to get those without stones, roots, and mud. “What is he doing?” Thomas whispered anxiously.

“Glutted with fish,” Oleg dismissed. Efficiently, he made a knot on the strand, bit a piece off, examined his work with satisfaction.

“But why clay?”

“He has a stomachache. One is helped from it by coals, another by clay… Let him have it. Today we’ll need to fly up to the evening.” He took the flint out of his bag. With a sigh, Thomas went for brushwood. He heard mighty smack on water and roar from the river again. The dog had some grass, as the wonderer said, but soon grew hungry for meat.

After a quick hearty breakfast, Oleg collected the slices of roast meat into a separate bag, then emptied the full kettle of thick viscous broth into the dragon’s mouth. The animal bellowed, turned his snout away, put his paw in jaws, trying to rack that filth away, choked, his eyes got five times bigger, about to burst. “Swallowed,” Oleg said with satisfaction. “Alright… He’ll sweat profusely but his illness be gone, like water off a duck’s back. Get on Skylark, Sir Thomas! Now he spreads his wings.”

* * *

The dragon dashed over clouds, like a stone shot of a catapult. Oleg and Thomas, tied firmly, were clinging to the comb, wrapping themselves in cloaks: the head wind was blowing off the last drops of warmth.

Thomas, despite his chattering teeth, would let his head down often and look below with a quiver. In the grey-green abyss, there were numberless mounted hosts moving and white spots of yurts among them, millions of those, and swarming about, as though it were billions of ants. “Polovtsians?” he asked.

“Pechenegs,” Oleg answered without looking there. “Their last attack on Rus’.”

“The last wife of priest, as one my friend wonderer says…”

“It’s really last. They got between the hammer and the anvil. Propped up by Polovtsians — new enemies to Rus’.”

“How will it?..”

“As it always was. Many of them came, and more to come. Off chance it comes right…”

Thomas glanced at the wonderer’s gaunt face with ardent sympathy. He undertook to an exorbitant feat: to find the Truth that will end all the unfairness in the world at once. Meanwhile, the triumphant faith of Christ came to his native land, and he turned a persecuted outcast!

“One good thing,” Oleg said with enthusiasm, “we won’t need to cross the lands of Polovtsians, Pechenegs, Berendeys! To tell the truth, I had my heart in heels about that. I don’t know whether we would pass…”

The dragon got flapping abruptly. Thomas was pressed on the slabs, his body filled with lid, even his heart struggled to keep pounding. Oleg sat still, like a stake driven in the flying beast’s back, fingered his charms, closed his eyes, froze up. His face looked dead, and the cold of fear in Thomas’s soul turned an icy block of despair, terror, and doom. The Secret Seven must be enraged. Put all business aside to search for us. They lost the trace when the two friends got underground, then found the wonderer for a moment, but the dragon was flying fast and they lost him again… But they will find and revenge the death of Baruk, the adept of black magic who sold his soul to Devil. Now they know exactly who killed that friend of theirs: the crusader, devoted knight of the Holy Virgin, and the wise wonderer, priest of old gods, some of whom, probably, the Savior did not precipitate into Hell as demons but elevated to angels by his throne!

Thomas managed to fall asleep, waking for a moment only for the dragon’s sharp ascend and only in the first hour. Afterwards he’d only puff in his sleep, fighting the strange heaviness, frown, and when the dragon spread his wings and soared Thomas would break into a happy smile, definitely dreaming of Krizhina and wedding rings.

The days are long in summer but even they end yielding to night. The sun started its way down to the horizon when Oleg stirred, took the dagger in hand. Thomas moved his shoulders. He felt deadly tiredness in every move of the wonderer.

The bony plates gave a quiver, came closer, all but trapping Thomas’s leg. The dragon turned his wings a bit, the whistling of wind grew thinner. As Oleg moved the dagger hilt, the dragon turned obediently, as a spurred horse. Thomas saw a hilly plain, a calm broad river flowing across it. On the other bank, a wonderful city towered on the hills: a colossal city, light and ornate, in golden towers and church cupolas that glittered in the red sunset so bright that his eyes watered, as though he looked at the sun. “Kiev!” Oleg said with grim pride.

“The capital city of Scythia?”

“You may call it Rus’,” Oleg allowed.

The dragon went down abruptly. Thomas clutched unwillingly at the comb: a moment before he was flattening under own weight, like the sheatfish that all but caused a quarrel with the dragon, and now he became as light as a bull bladder blown up by the children of common folk. Thomas held on involuntarily, despite the ropes and belt keeping him firmly, as he’d checked himself. “Where are we to land?” he shouted to the wonderer through the noise of the wind. “The streets are narrow!”

“To Kiev on a dragon?” Oleg amazed.

Thomas looked aside shamefully. How fast we get used to wonders! Yesterday I trembled with fear but today forgot I’m not on the back of a mighty, strong warhorse!

The dragon spread his wings, approaching the ground slowly. In hundred steps above the rocky surface he even made a sluggish flap of membranous sails to soften his fall. His outstretched paws hit against the hard ground resiliently. He went running, moving its paws up and down, with a loud clatter of claws. The spread wings rested on the thick air, after two score sazhens he stopped

Thomas and Oleg, ready beforehand, climbed deftly down the spiky side. They were on the bank of the colossal river, rocky mountains on their right: old, crumbling, gaping with fissures, gapes, caves. Their tops were green with pines, hazels, white-barked birch trees. In two versts away, a small river flowed into Dnieper. Oleg nodded at it. “Pochayna,”[25] he said with displeasure. “There Dobrynya killed the last serpent who lived in these mountains!” His face went dark as a thundercloud.

“Don’t be sad,” Thomas told him with care. “We’ve brought another one to breed!”

“You guessed right. Pochayna left a terrible memory: the place where Prince Vladimir renounced even his name and became Basil, where he baptized Kiyans, who were then called Kievins, with force, ordered them to forget Russian names and take foreign ones instead…”

The dragon, whom the wonderer continued to call a serpent, shook his head, looking around, stared with lackluster eyes at the big waves rolling ashore, turned and crept slowly to the gapes of caves.

“He’s settled,” Thomas sighed with relief. “I was afraid he’d rush fishing again!”

“Now he will bear no sight of fish for a week!”

Stones cracked under the heavy belly, the comb now subsided, now reared again. The serpent quickened his run, plunged at full speed into the biggest cave, backed at once, shaking his head, climbed with more caution into another one. His spiky tail flashed and vanished in.

“I hope,” Thomas said, “he won’t disturb the holy prayers of local hermits.” Oleg stared into the water of Dnieper, dark in the twilight. He seemed to have forgotten the dragon, his fingers running over the charms without stop, his eyes anxious.

Thomas glanced the place over with an eye of warrior and crusader. Pity he could not fly the dragon straight to Britain, it shouldn’t have taken more time than a day and night. But sir wonderer is where he wanted to get: those are roofs of his native city. Above all, no dragon will fly farther north, which is for the better in the end. Who of British knights would defeat such a beast? They’ll go into battle one by one and fall on the field… Let him live here till autumn. When cold comes, he will follow wild geese into his native warm lands.

Thomas touched the bag with Holy Grail — it had become as a habitual gesture of his as fingering charms to the wonderer — and followed his friend. The huge sword in well-fitted scabbard seemed rooted in the wonderer’s back, and the compound bow and quiver of arrows were fastened tightly with wide belts. Thomas tied up his belt on the go, lest his sword ring on the armor, came up with his friend and walked shoulder to shoulder with him.

Chapter 39

The sun had hidden below the edge of the earth long before, the dusk thickened. The heads of silver nails, which the Lord nailed the firmament with, were growing brighter the darkening sky. The waning moon got an evil glint, and Thomas recalled inopportunely, with a shudder of shoulders, that it was the sun to dead men who rise from their graves at night and roam the roads, to vampires and other unchristian things.

They walked along a narrow path winding under the steep bank. A thundering tide, as though a sea one, rolled in a shore. Far in the river, there was a glimpse of a bare back, a laughing face, then a splash of big fish tail and the strange creature vanished.

They came to a broad moorage made of thick logs driven into the river bottom and thinner logs atop them: glittering, tightly fitted, with trimmed sides. Those were new, good moorings.

Oleg nodded at a house of logs that stood on a steep hill. “The house of ferryman… The ferry comes from the other bank at dawn tomorrow. You’ll cross for Kiev. That means Britain at your hand: across Czech, Germany, and France.”

“And you?”

The wonderer gave no reply, made his way slowly up the slope to the house. Thomas shrugged. His belly was rumbling: he ate nothing all the way they made on dragon’s back, and then the serpent took away on his back all the remaining thirty-eight sacks of meat — the gift of savage steppe dwellers. The ropes will burst in a narrow cave, sacks drop down. Enough for the dragon to eat for a long time. The wonderer thought out everything: he only shouldn’t have judged of some peculiarities of Christian face. We could have earned eighty sacks of meat instead of forty…

There was a loud croak within his belly, a stir of guts demanding meat. Hastily, Thomas drove away the thoughts of food and young Polovtsian maidens, came up to the house of logs. It looked blind, with windows covered with no shutters but thick planks from inside.

Oleg walked along the wall, holding on the logs, feeling and patting them. His face looked strange. They heard a big dog in his kennel barking loudly, a menacing clang of his chain.

“Let’s go,” Thomas said. “Want to spend a night here? It is warm. We can have it on the moorings.”

“Wait…” Oleg groped about the windowsill, brought some parcel hastily to his eyes, sank down on the ground with a happy sob, leaning his back on the wall. “Home!.. Great Rod, I’m at home!”

Thomas caught him, helped him up his feet, as the dog started creeping out of his warm kennel, snarling. They went back to the moorage, Oleg sat down on logs, unfolded the parcel. Thomas gulped down: on wide burdock leaves, there was a dark round loaf of rye bread, two slices of meat, half a dozen onions. “Your charms told you that?” he asked with great respect.

Oleg broke the bread, offered Thomas. “They had.”

Thomas shook his head. “I need no stolen food.”

“Fool. It was left to us.”

“Sir wonderer… who save the Secret Seven could know we are here?”

“Rus’ knows. We’re in Rus’ already, see?.. The surest sign is the bread on windowsills. We have a custom of leaving some food to beggars, outcasts, travelers, pilgrims. At daytime hosts would give it himself, and when they go to sleep they leave it on windowsills.”

Thomas all but snatched the bread from him, dug his teeth in it, growling. The hunk of bread was dry. It would have been fed to pigs or goats and prospering hosts would bake a new one, but to the travelers even that dry bread tasted better than king’s meal. “Wonderful custom,” he agreed with his mouth full. “What’s the name of this country, you say?”

Big fish splashed in the water, a broad path of moonlight silver led from the moorings to the other bank. They sat on the end of the moorage, their feet dangling. The wonderer swayed his foot, Thomas looked with disapproval — swaying your feet is swaying demons on it — but said nothing. The wonderer’s face was strangely grim, though he was back to his city!

Thomas stripped off his armor: his body was itching all over. The dark water, warmed up during the day, welcomed him. He washed sweat and dust off joyfully, scratched his skin with strong nails, groaned through gritted teeth. As the dark dirt came off, a white spot got visible on his right shoulder.

“You love water, descendant of Pelop…” Oleg muttered with a strange note in his voice.

“What is Pelop?” Thomas grunted. “I’m worn out with your impious hints! And you keep dropping more and more of them.”

“Pelop,” Oleg spoke in a pompous drawl, definitely imitating someone, “was a hero, a son of Tantalus who killed his son and served to gods as the best of all courses. That was the time of such customs and such gods… But gods suddenly got angry: they stopped eating human flesh a day before… The father of Zeus would eat it but Zeus himself would not, only the flesh of animals… So the gods told Hermes to bring poor Pelop back to life. Hermes collected the meat and boiled it again in the same pot. And Pelop came out, even more beautiful, that’s the way of it… but one of his shoulders was missing. It was gobbled by Demeter, in her noble brooding and grief for her lost daughter. But Hephaestus was also a guest there, so he made a new shoulder of ivory bone. Since that, all descendants to Pelop have this white spot on their shoulder.”[26]

Thomas stopped, waist-deep in the water, listened but frowned, just in case. The wonderer’s speaking of some Pagan. A Pagan — but a hero too. “I saw some other man having this spot,” he said warily. “In the Holy Land… I’m afraid that was a leader of Saracen!”

“So what?” Oleg wondered. “Pelop has traveled a lot over the world.”

“Did Polovtsians live among Saracen in those times?” Thomas asked sarcastically. “I will never forget you those Kumans…”

“Hardly they did, but good customs live everywhere.”

Thomas frowned up, feeling hurt. “Paganism!” he grunted. “Some Pelop… I am Malton, no Pelop. What he did else?”

“What life made him to,” Oleg said composedly. “Became a king, but then Il, the king of Troy, all but captured him in his kingdom, Pelop had to flee him by sea. In Greece, he wooed Hippodameia, but her father made it a condition that her husband must outdistance him in chariot racing. The father either had a man’s interest in her or was foretold to die of his son-in-law… In a word, Pelop incited the king’s driver to replace by stealth the bronze linchpin with a wax one. When the chariots rushed on, the king gave a head start to his rival, as he always did, and started to come up to spear his back… To put it shorter, his chariot overturned and the king was a bulky and very heavy man, so he got hurt. To his very death! The driver came asking Pelop for what he’d promised him, including the wedding night of his bride, but Pelop pushed the fool off into the sea. While falling down, that man cursed all the posterity of Pelop.”

Thomas scratched the dirt off all the slower, listening. “I can believe in the curse. That may be why the two of us got into such scrapes. But one of my own ancestors killing a man treacherously? Even a fool? No. I am Malton.”

“As you like,” the wonderer said indifferently. “The curse haunted all of his posterity, especially Atreus and Thyestes… Haven’t you heard of them? By the way, Pelop spread his rule over all the southern Greece, or Apia, so it was re-named after him — Pelop’s Isle. Or Peloponnesus.”

Thomas pricked up his ears. “Well,” he said warily, “maybe he was a distant ancestor of Malton family…”

“He was also the founder of Olympic games,” the wonderer added.

“What is that?”

“A sort of games.”

“Pagan games? No. Pelop was none of my ancestors.”

“A sort of knightly jousting. And he also was the first champion.”

The knight’s honest, half-washed face displayed inward struggle. Oleg put the remaining onions down for Thomas, got up. His voice was heavy. “You have enough gold coin to buy a horse in Kiev. The road ahead is relatively safe. Across countries not so wild as those we passed.”

Thomas got out hastily, pulled his knitted clothing on his wet body, climbed into his armor. Only then he looked in the wonderer’s green eyes, which now were dark like two forest lakes. “And you?”

Oleg shook his head. “I need nothing in Kiev. I’m a hermit, a cave dweller, and all the caves are on this bank.”

They embraced, then the wonderer turned round and walked away hastily. In silence, Thomas watch his tall figure wear thin gradually in the moonlight. A last flash of sparkles on the polished sword hilt, and he vanished in the dark.

Thomas felt miserable, though in his nomadic life of knight errant he had parted with more than one fine friend. Some died, other settled in the bestowed lands, someone came back to his native castle, another left in the same way: after a short embrace and a wish of good luck, to recall his old friend and far lands briefly some day when he is old.

With a sigh, Thomas sat down on the edge of moorings again. He had no more hunger, so he sighed again, put the remnants of bread and meat down on the broad soft leaves, which looked like elephant’s ears. I need to take a first ferry to the city, buy a horse, or better two, and hurry across civilized countries to come back by Saint Boromir’s Day. Due to the dragon serpent, I made half a way in two days and nights and now I have at least a week of time left!

The night was leaving slowly, the eastern edge went slightly red. The knight’s eyes, accustomed to the dark, discerned the most delicate hues.

He seemed to hear a creak of logs behind. Glad of the wonderer’s coming back for some forgotten thing, he wheeled round abruptly. A flash in eyes, then a tight loop fell down on his shoulders. Thomas seized his sword, felt a pound in head, dropped the blade and collapsed prone on the wet logs.

He came to all but at once, tried to jump up but managed only a twitch, as he was tied up firmly into a likeness of caterpillar. Some dim shapes moved over Thomas In the twilight of dawn. He discerned voices. “I’d rather kill him… Knife in back, that for his sort!” — “You afraid?” — “An’ you? No me face such man for all gold on earth!”

The sound of steps got closer. Thomas jerked up his head with effort, twisted with sharp pain in the back of it. Before his face, there were high hunting boots, a dim glitter of spurs. He turned his head, clenching his teeth not to let a moan out.

A familiar voice, strangely hissing, came from above. “Well, Sir Thomas… what would you say now?” A strange man stood over him, resting on one leg. His sight made Thomas tremble all over and froze his blood. The man had a hump, his left shoulder higher than the right one, both arms in fresh scars. Instead of left hand, he had a small red stamp with white protruding bone. His clothes were baggy, his head hid beneath a helmet completely.

“God keeps patience for long,” Thomas croaked, “but he does strike, Sir Gorvel!”

“He strikes best who strikes last,” Gorvel’s husky voice rustled from behind his iron mask.

“Let’s kill him now!” a different man said anxiously. “I’m afraid.”

“A member of the Counsel of Secret Seven is to come,” Gorvel hissed. “To see whether he has some magic powers.”

“But it was one went away who had magic!”

“I can hear the steps of her!” Gorvel snapped in a husky angry voice. “You may kill him straight after.”

The warrior gave Thomas a kick. “At last you parted with your friend!” he said maliciously, twisting his mouth. “You, iron-bound scarecrow, don’t know he was the only match for me, Black Warrior. Once he injured me, left this scar on my face, but it was just because my foot slipped… He destroyed the Khazarian host I was leading against King Rumal… Killed ten of my brothers, lords of eastern lands. Only I and my elder brother Karganlyk survived… You were a fool to part with him!”

Through the lapping of Dnieper waves, he heard patting of feet. A small woman in a man’s cloak emerged on the moorings. The hood was pulled over her eyes, but she moved it back on her shoulders at once. She was fragile, her face pale and innocent, her eyebrows raised in surprise, an offended look in her big brown eyes. Thomas wished to shield her from danger immediately, to save her even from the morning chill and river dampness.

She cast a brief glance at him, spoke in a low husky voice, which made Thomas’s heart ache sweetly. “No need of it… but thank you, all the same. Where’s the cup, Gorvel?”

Groaning, Gorvel stooped to pick Thomas’s bag. “Here it is!”

She took the bag with no look within, made a nod in the side of Thomas. “Why is he here?”

“For you to see,” Gorvel replied in a very respectful tone. “He is too viable, strangely viable… Does he have any magic?”

The small woman looked closely at Thomas. He felt invisible fingers running on his chest, shivered in fright when those fingers reaching under his heavy armor, froze in fear while her fingertips examined his heart and brain quickly… Her eyes went dark, she spoke out in a restrained voice. “No magic. But immense courage and will!”

Clasping the bag tightly, she started a walk on the moorings back. “Your Might,” Gorvel said respectfully but with a well-hidden mockery in his voice, “we could leave together…”

She glanced over at him coldly. Her voice was razor-sharp. “Gorvel, you are not even a grandmaster! You are still closer to a plain hangman than to the members of Secret Seven!”

Gorvel trembled, fell down on his knees. The woman left. Thomas caught a last glimpse of her straight back, removed hood — and his own bag with the cup lost forever.

Gorvel turned his head slowly to the witness of his humiliation, his eye, blazing with fury, flashed in the slit. Thomas felt disgusted. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Black Warrior taking a knife out of his belt. Thomas froze. The Black would knife him like a sheep, like a chicken, killing a man is the same to him as adjusting his belt. A civilizer. A champion of progress…

The Black smiled maliciously. He spotted the fear in the knight’s eyes, his desperate attempts to release hands or at least to jerk his head away from the knife. The Black brought the blade to Thomas’s throat, his grin went broader. “Finish!” Gorvel croaked. “Finish off now!”

Thomas’s lips moved silently, as he made prayers. His eyes were fixed on the gleaming blade. The sun finally came out, the tip of the knife blazed with a terrible orange glare, as though burning hot.

Suddenly the fingers faltered. The knife blade made a wary swing, like the head of a snake about to jump. Then the fingers unclenched, dropping the knife. With a dull thud, it went into the log before Thomas’s face, all but cutting the tip of his nose. Perplexed, Thomas wrenched his head: the Black Warrior was falling on his back, his mouth gasping. In his left eye socket, a feathered arrow end trembled voluptuously.

Gorvel started, with either astonishment or the strong blow heard clearly to Thomas: a long arrow cut through the mail, went deep into the left side of the chest. The Black Warrior collapsed with a thunder that made the moorings shake, sprawled like a tall tree. Gorvel sank down slowly on his corpse, sobbing with fury, grasping at the arrow with his stump.

That was when Thomas heard the shouts of fright. He felt the speed and mortal accuracy of the deathly arrows cutting through the air. His guards darted about, hit against each other, tried to escape, but almost each of them got an arrow emerging in him with a light click. Thomas heard the soft swishing, barely audible in the thunder of waves, even the muffled strikes of shafts piercing through the light armor, crushing and splintering bones.

He waited until the arrows stopped swishing overhead, crawled away from the mooring edge, moving like a worm. Dying men writhed around, uttered awful screams, feeling the torments of hell close.

He saw the wonderer emerging from the riverside rocks, rushing, like a furious elk, to the moorings. Thomas shouted a warning. “More of them!”

Running, the wonderer drew out his huge sword. At the same moment, some dark squatting shadows started to leap onto the logs from the water. The first three advanced their curved swords, the rest were climbing on the moorings behind them.

The wonderer came like an avalanche, with a broad sway of sword. The Hazars, taken aback, had time neither to dodge nor to defend: the menacing blade reached some in chest, other in throat. Cut-away hands fell down on the damp logs, with sabers still clenched in fists.

The wonderer made two leaps up to Thomas, swayed his sword. Thomas felt a hit, and his limbs got spread sideways. Stunned, he got up to his fours, shook his head. His body had no time to go numb of tight bounds, so he groped around, feeling Hazar sabers one by one, crawled up to his sword that lay under the dying Gorvel. With a strong jerk, Thomas tore his masking helmet off and recoiled with disgust. Who made the poor man that ugly? “Sir Gorvel, if God is for us, who is against us?”

Gorvel had no more lips: only wrinkled gums with two last teeth in the right end of his lower jaw. His only eye blazed with hate. Gorvel tried to say something but only gave a rattle, dark blood gushed out of his throat. He coughed, splashing the blood around, tossed his head back, his eye died out.

“May you get lazy devils,” Thomas wished. He tugged his sword out from beneath the corpse, roared, forcing his fury, jumped into the battle. “Death to Pagans!”

The wonderer said nothing, his sword whirling like mad over him and around: he seemed surrounded by a wall of glittering steel. Someone threw a sword, it bounced back with a tinkle, all but hit Thomas.

The knight slashed into the fighting. With beastly fury, he brought his first blow down on the Hazar who sprung ahead. The foe advanced his shield deftly overhead, grinned and bent a little, his saber pointed at Thomas’s belly. The sword, as heavy as an anvil, thundered down and smashed everything together: the shield, the Hazar, and the saber. For a moment, the enemy looked a giant turtle, but the sword went on until the blade touched the moorage logs, then the iron turtle broke in halves and the log gave a nasty squirt of foul water.

Thomas raised his sword, jumped aside from the falling body: a broad-breasted Hazar coming down on him, sprinkling blood out of his nose, ears, eyes, throat, even from under his shoulder blades, as though hammered by a giant. The wonderer lowered his sword. For a moment he and Thomas stood face to face, breathing heavily and baring their teeth, like two wolves in the flock of killed sheep, then the wonderer blurted hoarsely, “Follow me! Quick!”

Thomas rushed after his friend. They ran up the steep bank, like two hot horses, dashed across the steep. On the go, Oleg pointed with hand at the entrance to the cave, a black gap in the brightly lit mountain wall. Thomas nodded silently, saving his breath.

They were in half a hundred steps from the gaping hole when the ground went trembling. From behind a rock, an animal, which Thomas at first glance mistook for another rock, dashed in heavy leaps. He was grey, human-shaped but three times as tall as a man, the bottom part of his body the broadest, each leg twice as thick as a human body, a roundish head straight on the shoulders, with no neck, his chest as large as a barn, his long arms, each as thick as an old oak, reached to the ground.

The beastly man bellowed, blocking the entrance. His eyes on the grey face flashed with red fire, his sharp hairy ears pricked up. The beast opened his monstrous jaws, showing his teeth, started to walk on the people: his arms spread wide apart, each finger the size of a billet, with a glittering sickle of a claw.

Thomas backed. With horror, he felt that the animal, despite his clumsy looks, would come up with in two or three lips, crush and make mincemeat. “Our Lady,” he whispered in terror, “save and have mercy… Sir wonderer, that’s our death!”

“It is,” Oleg said hoarsely. He backed, his mad goggled eyes were fixed on the animal coming upon. “I didn’t expect this!”

The beast’s red mouth puffed out the clouds of smoke, sprinkled with yellow saliva. Where a drop of it fell, stones broke with a crash, smokes rose. Thomas looked at his scary sword: it would not do to cut even the monster’s finger. “Our Lady, is it the end? Help, as I bear the cup with the blood of your son…”

He bit his tongue as he recalled the cup’s being in hands of the Secret Seven. The enemies won at the end, got the cup! Why don’t they leave the two of us be? Only Gorvel craved for revenge, and to Seven I’m like a fly to a dog…

The beast leapt, disallowing them to burst to the cave, spreading his huge paws, his iron claws made a grind, his jaws opened wider. His blazing eyes were looking down, straight at Thomas. The knight’s soul froze with terror, shrank into the farthest corner and stay there trembling, shielding its eyes with paws. He felt the burning heat of the beast’s breath. The wonderer stood pale, with a switch of his sword in both hands.

Suddenly they heard a clatter of horseshoes approaching. A shining knight on a snow-white stallion darted out from behind the mountain crest. Both the knight and his horse were radiant, the light growing brighter with every moment. The knight bent down to the mane, a lance advanced menacingly in right hand, a gleaming triangle shield on left elbow, with a sigil strange to Thomas. The knight had his visor lowered, his destrier galloped, the shining lance head looked straight at the monster’s side.

The beast uttered a scary roar, turned to the rider. The monster was as huge, squat, and indestructible like the pyramid of Egypt. The knight and his horse looked tiny. The sun dazzled Thomas, he seemed to catch a glimpse of a young face under the lowered visor. The shine moved swiftly together with the rider, while the beast was surrounded by darkness. Above him, black crows darted in circles, cawing ominously, flapping their wings, and impossibly big bats and flying hounds moved silently in the air.

The beast leaned forward, catching the galloping rider with giant paws. Thomas bit his lip and the wonderer swore loudly: the mysterious knight was dashing as straight as an arrow flies… The beast gave a triumphant roar, but the rider got through a moment before the huge palms came together with stone crash, his lance went with a terrible force into the left side of the chest.

For a moment it seemed to Thomas that the lance would shatter, as it used to happen in jousting: the beast’s chest was a real stone, but the lance broke through the bones, went in almost up to the handle. A fountain of dark, almost black blood spurted out of the wound, hissed, steaming with poison. The beast jerked his head up, uttered such a terrible roar that Thomas dropped to his knees and pressed his palms on his ears.

The mysterious knight should have left his lance to escape the giant paws cutting through the air blindly. The stallion bent his hind legs, backed, wheezed in fear. The knight, however, tugged his lance out with force, while his horse backed, stunned with the roar, so the lance went out with a squelch, blooded and smoking as though just from the hell’s fire.

Being skillful with reins and spurs, the knight made his stallion back until they were three score steps away from the reeling beast whose bellowing made both the ground and the sky tremble. His blood gushed out of the wound in a spurt as thick as a log. The stones below went black and smoking, some dark red flames flared up. Finally, the monster stiffened, half-hidden by the smoke, and collapsed with a crash, his outstretched paws all but reached the stranger’s horse.

The cloud swallowed the dying beastly god. They only heard a fading roar, groans, grinding of claws on the stone. When a blow of wind swept the smoky cloud away, tearing it to scraps, there were only black burnt stones on the ground.

The rider raised his lance to salute Thomas. His visor was lowered still but a pure unearthly light was coming through the thick grating: so pure that it made Thomas’s heart beat fast, with hysterical sobs. He barely retained from sinking down to his knees reverently. Instead, he jerked up his sword and, holding it vertical, put the handle to his forehead, then to his shoulders — left first, right second — and finally to his belly.

The mysterious rider turned his horse and galloped away. Oleg looked with great astonishment, still feeling stunned with the stranger’s sudden arrival and the miraculous rescue from the beastly god. The knight and his mount, as Oleg saw clearly, vanished in the thin air in their fourth jump.

Thomas sheathed his sword, crossed himself piously — with his fingertips that time. “I was honored!.. Like Sir Aragorn.”

Oleg stared in confusion at the spot where the Virgin had vanished. Who was babysitting for her? Nicolas is the one to nurse a baby until it stops squeaking. And other saints are not too good at nursing either, it’s written on their mugs. “No more faithful knights than one or two,” he said understandingly. “If she comes running to the aid of each!”

“Stupid you,” Thomas told him with superiority. “When the sovereign accepts the oaths of his vassals, he in turn swears to protect them!”

“Oh, foxy you… Why your sword in? Let’s run, or we’ll be late!”

Their feet rang on the melted ground crusted with hot stone. In one place at the edge of dark spot there was a crunch, Thomas all but fell sprawled: his foot went in, breaking the crust through like thin ice. Oleg ran into the gap with his sword ready, Thomas rushed after with bare steel: a hope to return the cup flashed in his soul. If the Secret One has not carried it to her treasury yet. That must be somewhere in Hell.

The cleft narrowed, vaulted overhead. The floor beneath their feet was even, scattered with stones sized from a fist to a ram that had rolled down from the walls. It darkened fast. When Thomas glanced back, there was a light slit with the sun shining in, while the way above reeked of decay, mold, rotten leaves, and also a sweetish smell of decomposing flesh.

Oleg glanced back and yelled, “Quick! Move your ass!”

Offended, Thomas rushed ahead like an elk, hitting stones off the walls with his iron shoulders, jumping over rocks, but still lagging back the wonderer who dashed like an arrow shot of a compound bow by a strong hand. Thomas got hot and puffing, gasping for air, choking with heat, when the passage made a turn. Bones, animal and human alike, crunched beneath his feet.

They burst into a big cave with a high vault where long icicles hung down, dismal and deathly pale, and a dark lake in the middle. The place smelled of mustiness, there were long grey manes of moss creeping down the walls, a glisten of mold, a smooth slime covering the walls.

Thomas heard the wonderer’s breath rattling and whistling, as though some bellows blown in, but the wonderer caught his sympathetic look and replied in a sullen grunt. “Listen to yourself!.. I can hear dogs barking in you.”

Thomas breathed fast and deep, trying to shake a faint feeling off. His hands were trembling, wet hilt slipping out of numb fingers. Oleg wheeled round to the dark passage from where they came: some voices were heard from there, a footfall, a clang of steel, the nasty smell grew stronger. Thomas saw his friend shaking his fists in fury, then Oleg calmed down suddenly and alerted.

The ground gave a shake, they heard a dull distant stroke. There was a strong blow of stink, the crash subsided, they heard stones that came rolling from above lying down. “A collapse?” Thomas asked, feeling creepy.

“Buried,” Oleg replied with strange satisfaction. His breast rose fast, a look of his bloodshot eyes sharp and furious. “No one will get out!”

“And we?” Thomas whispered.

“Off chance, Sir Thomas… He whom God helps nobody can harm.” He spat a grey clot of dust down on the stone floor, rubbed with boot sole. His face was twisted. Suddenly Thomas grasped in fright that was the first time he saw the wonderer, so humble and apparently drowsy, in rage.

“I’m tired of fighting,” Thomas said. “I want home…”

“Are you? And I’ve just began to rage! A Russian man harnesses the horse slowly.” He shot a sudden glance above, seized Thomas by arm and yanked away. Thomas fell down, felt dragged. There was a crash, stone splinters flew at his eyes. A huge stone icicle, the size of a warhorse, that had fell from the ceiling lay where he stood a moment before.

Oleg helped him up his feet quickly, dragged between the curving wall and the brim of the lake. Strange round heads looked out of the dark water. Their droopy whitish hair was dismal, they followed the running man with round frog eyes, unblinking. Once Thomas saw wet hands reaching for him: fingers webbed, like goose toes, but topped with sinister curves of long claws. He screamed and overran Oleg.

Chapter 40

Thomas ducked into the nearest cleft, without waiting for the wonderer. Strange creatures were coming out of the lake, water streaming off them, claws and fangs glittering in the semi-dark. The two men ran several steps bending, their heads touching the vault. Then the tunnel widened, they ran faster. Thomas was ahead, but suddenly he screamed and stopped so abruptly that Oleg came running into his iron back, hurt himself and hissed angrily, like a giant snake.

They were on the threshold of a colossal cave: its vault invisible high in the dark, walls separated by hundreds of steps. Something about that place reminded Thomas of Agathyrsian underground. In the middle, there was a colossal bloody-red stone slab, with writing on both sides in ancient lines and cuts, which, as Thomas knew from old legends, had been brought to Britain by settlers from Cimmeria or Scythia.[27] The slab had about seventy feet in length but Thomas grasped at first glance that was no rock but a giant tomb. A grave of unknown giant! The stone lid was made of red granite, the thick edges seemed to be pressed down by own weight to merge with the lower part, like two wax halves merge on a hot day.

Oleg pushed his back angrily with both hands. “Quick, you fool! Quick!”

Thomas rounded the stone tomb clumsily, felt a strange blow of warm air from it.

Oleg clung to the stone for a moment. “Svyatogor! Svyatogor!”

Thomas glanced back from the other end of the cave. He rather imagined than heard a heavy sigh, as though uttered by a mountain. The cave seemed small at once. “Muromets?.. You?..”

“Oleg the Wise! Any old arms here, Svyatogor?”

Thomas strained his ears. That time he heard it distinctly: a mighty low voice that filled the cave and seemed to move its close walls apart. “Oleg the Wise?.. I was preparing to become a hermit like you… Only holy books here…”

Thomas heard nothing more but a loud clatter of the wonderer’s boots. The tunnel made an abrupt turn, they ran across a small cave. Their feet raised colored dust. There were rows of narrow-necked vessels in the corners, a huge metal mirror on the wall, two giant chests beneath it, heaps of woman’s dresses everywhere.

Thomas cast a searching look around, but Oleg hit him between the iron shoulder blades. “The room of Sinegorka! Svyatogor’s wife… No cup here!”

They ran out, gasping for air. Thomas was the first to hear heavy footfall, so he slowed down his pace, twisted his head round, and stopped. The wall-shaking steps were coming from ahead, approaching.

Thomas drew his sword, almost with relief, leaned against the wall. His breast was heaving, his eyes poured over with sweat, his breath burst out as though from a rusty trumpet. Oleg stopped, with his breath rattling, his face exhausted and aged.

Heavy footsteps stopped. On the threshold of the cave, blocking the way out, there stood a colossal — twice as tall as a man — heavy beast: a scary ancient lizard covered with thick horny shield plates so tight that there were no slits at all. His sharp wide-set eyes looked coldly from a slit in his thick skull. For no moment they would let the wonderer out of sight. The beast stood on his hind legs, resting also on his thick tail studded with spikes and horny excruciations on bony plates. The dragon’s chest had a metal glitter, and his forepaws, short and apparently weak, were twice as thick as Thomas’s arms.

“Goodness!..” Thomas babbled. He took a firmer grip of his sword, clenched his jaws, ready to strike and crush until he falls dead in the glorious battle.

The wonderer sounded unusually strained. “Thomas, wait… Is it you, Sardan? Don’t conceal, I can see you in any guise!”

The dragon made a heavy step forward, his jaws flung open suddenly. His roar stunned Thomas: the knight squatted, as though hammered on his helmet, barely kept his sword. His head was ringing, he felt helpless, his own voice came out as thin as a gnat’s chirp. The wonderer yelled back, the dragon roared again, then, through pounding in Thomas’s ears, came a harsh, enraged voice. “Adept of Ancient Arts?.. Magic of transformation into a beast?”

The wonderer’s counters began to tremble — so it seemed to startled Thomas — then got blurred. The pilgrim’s pure appearance showed out some beastliness, more dreadful than a dragon’s, his face started to lengthen into a scary snout, but the next moment Thomas heard his voice, hoarse with hatred. “No, the adept of subhuman… I’m the Wise, I look in the future!.. You took what man had been, I take what he will be!”

There were bright bloody-red flashes about the cave, then it was flooded by a rich color of fresh blood. The wonderer’s rags flared up, fell down in burning pieces. He stepped over the fire and smoke, bare and red-hot, his strained muscle seemed metal to Thomas. There were no more than five steps between the foes, both stared at each other in a duel of eyes: a huge beast and a man unarmed but strangely dangerous.

With a roar, the dragon rushed on the man. Thomas shrunk back to the wall, raised his sword overhead. The dragon’s terrible claws, shiny like diamonds, went into the wonderer’s bare back. Red blood spurted out. Thomas bustled along the wall, escaping the rolling rock of bones and claws by miracle. Several times he raised the sword but dared not to strike: the beast and the wonderer had grappled each other so tightly that the one atop changed at every moment.

The beast roared with triumph malice, his mouth breathed fire, his teeth looked like white-hot knives. He had no chance to use his teeth to end the battle: the wonderer’s fingers were breaking his jaw off, the dragon bellowed fervently, tried to crush the man in his forepaws. Once the beast got used to pressure coming from one side, Oleg yanked the jaw suddenly into another. There was a crack, a crunch of joints, the dragon choked with own roar. His jaw dropped, as though suspended on a cloth, a trickle of blood ran down his narrow snake tongue, black and forked. With a hoarse roar, the dragon thrust the man overhead, all but reached the vault, going to smash him on the stone floor.

Thomas slashed the beast’s leg, holding sword with both hands. It was like slashing stone: the blade bounced off with such a force that made his arms numb up to the shoulders, yellow sparks flew sideways. Then the sword was thrown down, its point produced some sparks out of the floor too… Suddenly the dragon uttered a terrible roar of fear and pain: the knight’s sword reached his foot and cut three clawed toes off. Within the cut, there was a brief glitter of big bones, then dark blood gushed out at once over the floor. The chopped toes twitched, scratched with claws.

The dragon lowered his head, his blazing eyes searched for Thomas. The wonderer thrust his fingers with force into the red of them, Thomas heard a distinct crunch, then the dragon bellowed even louder. Feeling himself fainting, Thomas slashed with his last strength on another foot, the same vulnerable spot on it. At once he was yanked up and flung across the cave. He hit against the floor, rolled with a thunder of steel. For a moment it was dark before his eyes, he felt blood in his mouth, all of his bones aching. With great effort, he struggled up his feet, the way he had risen, even more exhausted, for the seventh storm of the Tower of David.

In three score steps there was a creepy ball rolling with roar, crunch, crackle, rattling breath. Thomas hurried there, oblivious of himself leaning on the sword as though it were a staff and dragging his right leg.

The roar was getting muffled until it turned a hiss. The monstrous ball unrolled, the beast’s head fell on the floor with a heavy bony thud. He lay on his back, his forepaws gripping his blooded mug, his hind paws twitching convulsively, scratching the floor. There were two deep wounds in the dragon’s throat. The wonderer, if that man really was him, sat on the dragon’s chest. He was blood-stained all over.

Thomas turned away hastily. The beast’s belly is torn apart, like a rotten cloth, two ribs protruding through the broad cut. The slime is gurgling in it, the liver, as huge as a boulder, twitching, craving for life, but the head does not move as though glued to the floor. Thomas kept his sword ready for a strike, just in case, came closer and saw the sharp cervical vertebrae broken and smashed mercilessly, jutting out through the broken skin. The head, as large as a rock, was only kept by sinews.

Oleg stood up, ferocious, bathed in the dragon’s blood, and Thomas freeze all over — the wonderer seemed more dreadful than the dead beast. “Oleg,” he said in a shaky voice, “is it what man will be?”

The wonderer’s face, twisted in the beastly convulsion, smoothed down slowly, like high storm waves when a barrel of oil is poured over them. His furious eyes were still blazing like two blooded stars, but his creepy bulging muscle subsided and smoothed out. He spoke in a scary inhuman voice, “He may be that…”

He jumped off the huge corpse. His mouth was dripping with blood, he wiped it off his lips disgustfully with the back of his hand. His chest made one more mighty raise and fall, his eyes lost their bloody glitter. He spoke in his usual but dead tired voice. “People can be different… but they will be what we’ll make them.”

In a dark side passage Oleg slowed down his pace. “To the left!.. Two guards there. Sir Thomas, we need no knightly tricks, such as a challenge for jousting…”

“I see,” Thomas interrupted. “Your company had made me a Scyth, even a Rus. I must kill them without noise, yes? As common men?”

“As villains,” Oleg grunted.

Thomas could hardly see Oleg’s figure: it was almost pitch-dark, with only a torch lit far beyond the turn, casting a faint gleam on the granite crystals. Beneath the torch, two guards sat straight on the floor, their backs leaned against the wall. They held bare swords between their laps and seemed drowsy.

Thomas tried to step as silently in his armor as the wonderer did barefoot and naked, but the corridor got filled with crashing, clanging, ringing sounds — those could be made by the beast if he’d crushed them and were coming back. The guards stood up hastily. One asked loudly, apparently briskly, to demonstrate they had been wide awake, “Your Might? Are the outlaws captured?”

“Only one,” Thomas replied in a rude voice, nodded at Oleg. “The other is hiding.”

“We’ll find him!” the guard promised with servility. “All entrances are sealed. No way out for gnat, nor for ant. And which has esca–”

He raised the torch higher, it lit the approaching Thomas. The guard’s eyes opened wide, his mouth opened for a cry. Oleg hurled the stone he had ready. A dry crunch of teeth, and the guard leaned against the wall, his throat swallowing his cry along with his blooded teeth and the stone. The second raised his sword, but not for attack: he was definitely going to strike on the iron door, calling out other guards… or something worse. Thomas, having no time to reach him, threw his two-handed sword like a spear. The guard sobbed, lurched: the sword pierced him through just under his throat. He slid down the wall, his back leaving a red trace, a broad steel point looking out between his shoulder blades.

While Thomas tugged out his sword and wiped it clean, Oleg stripped the bigger of two guards off quickly, pulled his clothes on and became again the same wonderer whom Thomas seemed to have known for lifetime. Though now the wonderer walked with his jaws clenched, the knuckles of his fists white, his eyes narrowed. Like a lynx before a risky jump.

“Want your cup back?” Oleg asked suddenly.

“As much as my soul saved!” Thomas blurted.

“It’s beyond this door. I mean the cup.”

“My soul too…”

Oleg backed a step, scowled at the door, dashed ahead, advancing his shoulder. There was a brief flash of fire around the wonderer as he struck, a burst of bolts and bars, and the folds flew open, as if it were a door of doghouse kicked by a giant.

They burst into the room in clouds of dust and blue smoke. Thomas rushed on two big warriors before they could gather their wits, but they gripped their sabers at once, having their heads kept.

Oleg leapt on Isfahan: he had never seen that One before but knew enough of him to use the first opportunity to seize him by throat. They collapsed on a floor, the stone cave gave a shake. It became hot as Arabian desert, with a smell of burnt stone.

Thomas’s sudden attack pressed his foes to the wall. Two violent blows slashed the shield of one and stunned another on his helmet. The first warrior slipped beneath Thomas’s arm. Fiercely, the knight brought his sword on the stunned man and, with no second look at the falling body, swung round to another one, parried a glittering saber, made a wolfish grin and started to press him into the corner.

Oleg and Isfahan were rolling about the cave, grappling and strangling each other. Both emitted heat. Thomas’s armor got hot, he began to gasp for hot air, the sword hilt burnt his fingers. His enemy also bared his teeth with malice. Covered with sweat, he looked like an animal at bay. While fighting, he shot glances at the wonderer and his master rolling in the middle of the room, as though expecting for help. With his last strength, Thomas pressed on him with heavy blows, feinted with his hand, putting it under the glittering saber: the blade rang and bounced off the steel plate, Thomas’s other hand struck with sword at once.

The ball of grappling fighters was rattling and crunching on the floor, pebbles under the rolling bodies burst with ringing sounds, as though in an oven. Suddenly the cave walls shook with a hollow rumble, a grey crack ran across the grey floor. The magicians would get up on their knees, seize each other’s necks again, pound with fists, wheeze madly, choking with hate. The crack was moving apart. From the depth, a puff of heat came out, a cloud of smoke raised, an orange flame darted after it and hid again, then some red sparks flew out like big flies.

Oleg and the master rolled over the crack. While sliding back, both got stuck in the widening gap. Thomas breathed heavily, reeled in the struggle against torrid heat that made sweat pour over his eyes and dry out at once, leaving the salty crust on his face. Hastily, he stepped up to the fighters, stretched his hand for Oleg to seize him and drag away from danger, but a scorching puff came in his face, his brows and eyelashes crackled. He shielded his face with a palm, advanced another hand, groping in the air blindly, stooped over…

His fingers got burnt, he barely kept a scream. There was a thunder, a hit of dry crash on his ears. He took his palm off his eyes for a moment, started back.

The cave was crossed, from end to end, by a blazing crack, wide enough to swallow a rider with his horse. Clouds of thick black smoke came belching from it, smelling of burnt flesh, skin, and bones. The cave vault was blazing with glows of the hellish fire buzzing in the depth. Thomas seemed to hear a long terrible scream, as if someone kept falling down away through the endless flames.

Coughing and rattling with dry throat, Thomas crept to the far wall, pressed his back on it. The smoke was eating his eyes, the stiffened bodies of dead Hazars lay at hand: the blood covering them had dried out in the heat, turned a brown crust, already cracked, like a bark of old trees. On the other side of the crack, through fire and smoke, Thomas saw a small marble table dimly. The cup, polished by the bag during the journey, was gleaming on it. The Holy Grail!

Thomas made a superhuman attempt to rise, but his heat-stricken body could not move. He felt dizzy, delirious visions flashed in his mind. Suddenly he realized he was dying, of the hellish fire and overdried air, but felt no fear, only grief that he failed to deliver the cup…

The walls gave a dull crash, he felt a heavy jerk beneath, then a ringing clatter of pebbles on his helmet and shoulders. Dust and smoke hid the cup for a moment, then there seemed to be a blow of coolness. Thomas shook his head to clear his sight: the edges of crack had come together, into a black broken line. They were rising in turns, Thomas heard the stone blocks grinding and crackling.

He pushed himself off the wall, fell to his fours and crawled across the cave. The floor stopped trembling but kept burning his fingers, as well as his armor burnt his body. In the smoky room, the cup shone with a pure unearthly light, strangely familiar. Thomas sobbed: a flash of the same pure light came from Oleg, his true friend, when he dashed on the door of that asylum of dark magician!

As his head hit against the leg of the table, he clung at the burning hot marble, raised his disobedient body. Once his face was on a level with the cup, it shone brighter, as though it recognized him. Thomas took it carefully with trembling fingers, sobbed with exhaustion. The cup was strangely cool, as if it had stood in a shady garden, on a bank of a cold stream. Clutching the cup against his steel breast, Thomas staggered back into the corner where he’d left his sword near the slain Hazars. Leaning on it as on a staff, he hobbled out of the room, struggled to step over the broken door knocked out by the wonderer: it was melted and burnt over.

He had already passed the door when a thunder came from behind. The stone floor in the middle of the cave rose with dry crackle and crash, rocks flew sideways like dry leaves. The wonderer came out and up like a stone pillar: breathing heavily, exhausted, staggering with tiredness. Thomas screamed, almost dropped the cup, rushed to his friend. The wonderer leaned on his shoulder, drops of man’s sweat hissed on the steel plate, evaporating at once. The wonderer’s breast was rising fast and high. “You got the cup? Good, It’s very important.”

“Oleg…” Thomas said happily. “Dear sworn brother… I could not guess you are a demon as well… All right, we’ll be in Hell together!”

Oleg took in a deep breath, said hoarsely, “Let’s hurry up.”

“You know the way out?”

“No ideas at all.”

“But how…”

“There’s one more enemy. The Head of Secret Seven!”

Thomas felt creepy all over, despite the hot air. “Isn’t it enough fighting?” he asked in a husky voice.

“We need to know: why all that fuss about an old copper cup?”

He went out of the cave briskly. There was a rumble behind, the ceiling collapsed. Through the doorway, Thomas could see huge falling stones. He hurried after the wonderer, felt a push of hot air on his back. He glanced over again: the ceiling was down, walls coming closer.

“We have no need of the cave,” Oleg blurted impatiently.

“None we have,” Thomas agreed, then asked cautiously, “And that… magician? Couldn’t he survive as you did?”

“No,” Oleg replied without looking back.

The ceiling in two steps behind Thomas subsided, a stream of dirty water gushed out. He mended his pace, ran after the wonderer on the dry. “You killed him?”

“I failed to do it. Too much killing! I granted his life to him.”

“How is he?”

“Enclosed in stone. About a verst deep in. Or deeper… I don’t remember.”

Thomas hurried, his dumbfounded eyes fixed on the hunched back that once was so broad. His sword was sheathed, he pressed the cup on his breast, as he had no bag anymore. “Won’t he get free? That would be bad…”

“Even the Secret Seven have no power to free him! He’s spread inside the stone, merged with it.”

“You are cruel as only a Pagan can be!” Thomas cried hoarsely. “He’d prefer death.”

“Death,” Oleg replied heavily, without looking back at him, “is for a long time, very long… And a live man has hope.” There was a thunder behind them again, sand and pebbles came down in torrents on their heads and shoulders.

“If he’s imprisoned for life… How long do magicians live?” Thomas cried on the go.

“Differently,” the wonderer snapped. “Fagim perished in over hundred thousand, and Trtsik died of old age in forty… You hold the cup firm! Don’t be distracted. We need to ruin all this bug-ridden place. No mercy to those who gorge on our blood. Do as you would be done by!”

They climbed downstairs, then the corridor turned twice, Thomas clasped the cup with care to his breast.

The corridor ended with a small ordinary door. Tar torches blazed on both sides of it, scattering sparkles. No guards, no bars. Thomas shrugged his shoulders with chill.

The wonderer pushed the door, it opened with no squeak. There was a middle-sized room with ascetic furniture. A monastic room, Thomas would say if not the presence of Satan he felt there. The candles burning in the wall niches spread a pleasant sweetish smell around. In the middle of the cave, there was a tall table where a broad-shouldered man in black clothes was sitting with his back to Oleg and Thomas, writing on a parchment with a white goose quill.

Chapter 41

The man did not turn but continued to write. “What detained you, the Wise?” he asked slowly.

“Trifles,” Oleg replied. He winced, fingers of his right hand were feeling a huge swollen bruise on his left elbow. “Have I kept you waiting too long, Slymak?”

“Never mind,” the man replied. “I had some things to finish before, anyway.” He put the quill aside, turned slowly. A deathly cold struck through Thomas, a breath out of grave. Slymak had white hair and tiny grey beard but radiated the power Thomas had sensed neither in himself nor in any other man before. The look of his sunken eyes was piercing. Thomas felt the evil wise man had known all of him at once, assessed his thoughts and desires, weighed his honor and knightly pride, looked through memories of the banks of Don and the beautiful Krizhina. Slymak did not look a strong man but Thomas had no doubt that a move of his eyebrow would shatter a stone wall.

“The idea of stealing the cup,” Oleg spoke slowly, “was yours?”

He spoke with strain, watching every move of the Head of Secret Seven, while Slymak settled back in his armchair easily, crossed his legs, smiled in a relaxed, free and easy way. Like a lord. “The Wise,” he said, savoring that word, “but have failed to guess… Haven’t you?”

“I have,” Oleg replied honestly.

“Now I can say it,” Slymak said uncaringly. Thomas caught himself at an anxious thought of himself and the wonderer as mice in a box together with a big cat. “Surely, the cup is nothing to us, people of reason. It means little even to Britain… though it could be some help to her.”

“Who is it important for?”

Slymak smiled condescendingly, fiddled with his beard. “For the new country, new nation… that could rise hundreds of years later!”

“Your calculations go that far?” Oleg said in a dull voice.

“That’s your school, the Wise. You were the one to lay the foundations of knowing, of exact science. Our calculations say the cup will be carried across the ocean where a huge continent lies… In a word, there will be a new nation that may grow too independent… er… owing to some circumstances of its birth. That nation could acquire unprecedented power! You know we need no foes. We need workers.”

“Is the cup bound to get to that new continent?” Oleg asked.

Slymak nodded at the stiffened Thomas who stood still, pressing the cup against his chest with both hands. “His descendants!.. Like father, like son. Adventurers, brigands, poets, hirelings, dreamers, prophets… All of them shall rush to the new lands and create the state of new… er… sort. All the states we know today are just hen coops and farmyards as against that one. You know we can’t allow it. No nation or kingdom can disobey us.”

“Have you heard of how Fagim died?” Oleg said softly. “He was the Head of Secret Seven.”

Slymak’s pale cheeks flashed with red. He leaned on the back of his armchair, chuckled. “Yes, you succeeded in uniting Slavs. Though only eastern tribes. But we made this victory of yours turn out to be a defeat! The son of Rurik, whom you’d led to Novgorod, tried to accept the Judaism of Khazars. His wife was baptized in the Orthodox Christian rite. Furious Svyatoslav, a grandson to Rurik, adhered to the true Russian faith only because he was indifferent to any gods. And his son, great-grandson to Rurik… ha ha… left his Russian name of Vladimir for the Greek one of Basil. With his help, we threw a net of steel on the savage beast called Rus’!”

Oleg went black, as though burnt by invisible fire. His teeth made a fierce grind in the cruel silence, he looked down.

“And Vladimir himself,” Slymak went on with malicious laughter, “the one baptized your Rus’, was but half a Rusich, which you fear to recall! Who was… ha ha… his mother? Malusha, a daughter of Gulcha who’s now one of Secret Seven! And you know well who was Malusha’s father. You know, don’t turn away!.. And you know why it was so easy for Malusha to enchant the furious Svyatoslav, the last Prince of Rus’. You know why his son Vladimir, who was considered a contemptible offspring of slave woman, killed his blood brothers… his half-brothers, of pure Rus blood. And why he became the Great Prince of all Rus’, took the daughter of Roman emperor for wife, forced the wild Rus’ to christen!”

Oleg was bending, as though under an avalanche of falling rocks. He turned ghastly pale, with black pits of eyes, his breath rattling. He looked aged at once, dead tired.

“The very name of your nation is all but extinct,” Slymak snapped fiercely. “In the most remote villages, where our power has not reached still, there are Ruses but all the rest are Russian slaves, Russian serfs, Russian servants… Later they shall be just Russians. You, as a sorcerer, must know well the difference between noun and adjective!.. Once I met Sardan, just after he had penetrated to Kievins. ‘What nation are you now?’ I asked. ‘Russian,’ he answered. I laughed and said, ‘And I am Greek…’ Ha ha! The top class of humor, you see?”

Every his word bent Oleg down like a heavy stone dropped on shoulders. Suffering for his friend, Thomas grasped with fear that the evil mage spoke truth: the wonderer was the last Rusich. The others in his fatherland were just Russians.

“Where are your Ratmirs, Vsegnevs, Vedeneys, Vysheslavs?” Slymak added. He leaned forward in his chair, peering greedily into the sorcerer’s face contorted with pain. “Princess Olga took the name of Helen — that must be a particular insult to you… ha ha!.. Half of man’s names we replaced by Jewish ones, like Ivan, and the rest by mixture of Greek, Chaldean and other scum. A better trick than Obres did harnessing your women into their carts! The present-day Ruses… no, Ruses would not have submitted… Russians carry us on their backs and sing praise to us!”

Oleg shook his head, as if he struggled not to faint, asked in a lifeless voice, “Why gathered here?”

Slymak’s face twisted, his eyes glittered with malice. Red spots on his cheeks flashed brighter. “Do you think we mean to meet you? Try to capture you? Too much honor! I won’t repeat Fagim’s mistake. I know all about you! I’m stronger. You know that.”

“Slymak,” Oleg whispered as if he were clutched between heavy boulders, “you are no kind of beast like Sardan or Isfahan. They were brutal fanatics. I can guess why you did not interfere… I know you are genius, Slymak. But why don’t you see it’s not the way it should be?”

“Wise, I can’t believe my ears! Weren’t that you to found the Society of Magi in ancient times and put the Counsel of the strongest Seven at the head of it? To guide all the nations in the world, to direct, to correct, to lead the way to good and suppress evil? You were at lead for several thousand years! Then you supposedly have found another way, so you demanded to prohibit magic, to destroy it. It is written in records you came out alone against the whole Counsel…”

Stunned, Thomas shifted his gaze between the evil magician and own best friend.

“But you won,” Slymak continued. “The new Counsel took your way. We accepted your knowing, and the magic was extinguished and banned. The mankind started on the path of extending knowledge…”

“I did not want fires made to burn witches!” Oleg interrupted painfully. “The extreme was not only those fires all over Europe but about the knowing itself too. Of all the knowery, which means ‘to know,’ ‘to realize,’ ‘to understand,’ you only took the precise analysis to build all the work of Seven Secret on it. I know that to make a thing straight you need to bend it into other side and there had been a wild outburst of magic in the past… but it’s the way a common man may think! And we must understand that science is not the only thing people need! You rubbed magic out of their life — well, though it was done with too much haste. But you almost deprived them of culture too! That’s inexcusable.”

The voice of supreme magician grew stern, his eyes flashed angrily from under overhanging brows. “The culture has remnants of old beliefs, magic, superstition, and simply ignorance! That’s not the load to conquer a peak with.”

“Do other Secret Ones hear us talking?” Oleg asked suddenly.

Slymak’s eyes narrowed, he replied coldly, “Even grandmasters and plain masters hear us. In all the parts of the world. But there’s no help for you. Those on your side have only a silent sympathy, and your opponents came here to stop you. Culture is a sluggish, hesitating thing, while civilization means energy, confidence, firm grip!”

“The sunset is far yet,” Oleg said.

“What?” Slymak asked. His lips stretched in a jeering smile. “Will culture have time to develop the same firm grip?”

Oleg shivered, as if he got caught in a cold rain. “Gods forbid culture in power! As well as culture with fists… Let’s leave it, no agreement we can reach on this point. I see it’s not about me. Is it a plot against Kiev?”

Slymak laughed with pleasure. “Our men already have assumed power. Soon they come out openly. Kievins are already slaves, though they don’t know it. But soon they’ll know.”

Oleg clenched his teeth: pain was pulsing in head. He saw the city crackling in crimson flames, men running with raised axes dripping with blood, arrows and darts flying, mad horses galloping with empty saddles… “In thirteen years,” he whispered in depression.

Slymak jumped up in his armchair, took a firmer grip of armrests. His eyes widened. “Have you calculated?.. No, thus, you rely on intuition, or prognostication as you call it. Yes, thirteen is our secret number. We resolved to take power in Kiev and all the Rus’ in thirteen years. To take it openly. To bring down not only Pagan shrines that survived in some villages but the stupid Christian ones too. Wherever we win we’ll put our symbol — the five-pointed star! We’ll put it, Wise… About all the Kiev, our fangs and claws are hidden, waiting for an order, and here, in a safe place, the vigilant brain!”

Oleg drooped, his crackled lips moved, he spoke with entreaty. “Blood again?.. But Kievins shall take axes! When Ruses are at bay, they always clutch at this last argument!.. Fierce killing again, streams bursting their banks with blood…”

“You see?” Slymak asked with keen interest. “It’s a pity our calculations, however precise, give no visualization!”

Oleg shook his head. “Half of Kiev burnt, many people dead… But don’t be glad, Slymak. That day shall see the death of all your men. Of every single one.”

Slymak recoiled, as though punched in face. “When it happens, you say?”

“In 9882 by Russian calendar, 6621 by Jewish, 451 by Saracen, and if we count years since the birth of Christian god, then it’s 1113… Why so much love for baker’s dozen? After that butchery, you’ll never dare to act openly, Slymak. Secretly — yes, but openly — never.”[28]

Slymak narrowed his eyes, as though about to jump. “Won’t you lead to that butchery?”

“You know I’m against killing. And what’s the use of fangs and claws… without head?”

“Without head?” Slymak hissed very softly.

A glaring flash of blue fire dazzled Thomas. Oleg was flung to the wall, enveloped in quivering, strangely rustling, like butterfly wings, flames. Thomas rushed with raised sword on the evil wizard but hit against some invisible wall. With fright, he felt separated from the battle, as though by most transparent glass.

The wonderer pushed off the wall, a dazzling white light came on Slymak. The magician stood up (he turned out to be taller than Oleg), jerked his long lean hands overhead. He was unaffected by fire, and Oleg the same, flames clung to him like clothes, but Oleg clenched his teeth, thick blue veins bulged on his forehead, sinews strained in his neck, as though he shouldered a mountain ridge.

The blue fire around Oleg flared up. Slymak stepped to his foe, as though squeezing himself through the mass of invisible glue. The blue and white flames met. Slymak’s face stiffened, as well as the wonderer’s, both were breathing heavily.

Thomas kept clenching his fingers painfully on the sword hilt. Twice he tried to break through invisible wall, slashed it, but the heavy two-handed sword rebounded, almost wrenching his hands. Slymak made one more step. There was a terrible hiss, a downfall of white sparks. Both enemies, the magician and the sorcerer, clenched their teeth and fists, trickles of turbid sweat ran down their scary faces.

Slymak took in a deep breath, alerted. Thomas felt in fear that was a decisive moment in the fight. The blue fire blazed up, started to absorb the pure white light. Oleg bared his teeth in agony, his head tossed back, as he slipped down the wall helplessly.

Thomas, beside himself with fury, bellowed a war cry of Angles, brought the big two-handed sword down with all his might. The gleaming blade, which could break the rider in halves down to his saddle, met an obstacle, all but stopped, then broke through the invisible wall and the sword point reached the enemy magician between shoulder blades!

With a crash, the blue flames vanished at once. It went dark, as the white fire around Oleg was all but a smolder. Slymak turned slowly to Thomas, the sword fell out of the terrible wound, clanged down on the floor. Blood gushed out of the broad cut. Slymak pulled a face of pain mixed with astonishment.

Oleg struggled up his feet, leaning on the wall. His chest heaved fast, his breath wheezed. The wonderer’s eyes were clouded with pain. Slymak lurched in the middle of the room, fell to his knees. His dry lips uttered a faint moan, “How could you?..”

“With no remorse,” Thomas snapped fiercely.

“Noble knight… on back…”

“I don’t mind what a boar thinks of me!” He supported staggering Oleg. “Sir wonderer, are you safe?”

Blood trickled out of Oleg’s lips, set at once. He glanced askew at the dying magician who was still balancing on his knees in the puddle of own blood, said with reproach, “You could do it earlier… You are my only chance!”

Slymak was going as yellow as a dead man, the puddle of blood spreading.

“May I,” Oleg asked, “tell your will to someone? Your last words?”

The lips of supreme magician stirred, he whispered faintly. “Come back… To the head of the Counsel of Secret Magi… your own brainchild…”

Thomas sprang aside from Oleg in fear, felt the sword hilt.

Oleg shook his head. “Until there is power over power… I am the eternal opposition.”

Slymak collapsed face first, splashing the blood over the floor.

Thomas felt sick of the awful wound: cleaved bones, gurgling blood, the body still trying to live… “It is fatal even to a magician,” Oleg told him softly. “Let’s get away from here.”

The opposite wall cracked and slid apart, as though obeying his gesture — or it did obey. In a small room filled up with thick books, rolls of maps and drawings, a small woman sat at the table, her head rested on her hands. She started with fright, and Thomas recognized at once those raised surprised eyebrows, innocent eyes, tender features of her face. The woman who took the Holy Grail! He pressed the cup instinctively to his chest.

“Sir Thomas,” the wonderer said gloomily, “let me introduce to you… my most dangerous enemy! Gulchachak or Gulcha… Not a true name, but that’s how they call her.”

The woman rose slowly. Her wide open eyes were searching his still face with disbelief. “You… you killed them all?”

“Defending,” Oleg replied briefly.

She cast a momentary glance at Thomas. He braced himself up, dusted his elbows off, stood upright proudly. “Killed everyone?” she asked Oleg, her disbelieving eyes still fixed on his gaunt face.

“Defending,” Oleg said again.

She clutched her small fists against her bosom, screamed in a thin voice. “But how you… He was stronger! We calculated hundreds of times! No mistake could occur!”

Oleg made a slow move of shoulders. “Who says it did? But I had a tiny chance. And I used it.” He put his arm round her shoulders, led her to the entrance that opened suddenly: a glare of distant sunlight at the end of the tunnel.

Thomas felt magicians, Holy Virgin, beastly god, falling walls, and the beautiful woman who turned out to be the most dangerous person in the world — all mixing up in his mind. He trailed along behind them irresolutely, pressing the cup on his breast, his sword hilt catching at the low ceiling.

The sunlight struck his eyes with pain. Thomas screwed up, breathing in the cool air greedily. The cold waters of great river were flowing by near at hand. Behind him, there were towers of cliffs gaping with black holes: from small bumblebee or swallow to giant ones. In one of those caves, our serpent now lies drowsy, counting sacks of juicy meat in his sleep.

The woman turned round slowly to the wonderer, her face was meek. Oleg looked in her eyes. She lifted her arms, which were bare and tender, but he caught them, brought away from his neck, examined her palms closely. With an imperceptible move, he tore a nail off. It fell down on the ground: bloody, glittering with razor-sharp edge. The strange woman did not even wince, looking in the wonderer’s green eyes. All of her nails, as Thomas spotted with terror, were in place. It appears weapons are not limited to swords only. A false nail can hide enough poison to send a legion of heroes to Heaven! Or either to Hell.

Oleg put her palms on his neck slowly. Their eyes kept grappling. “Any other tricks?” he asked softly.

“None,” she breathed. “You won again, damn you…”

“Why so angry?”

“You know, rascal, I wish no one’s death as much as yours. Let it be terrible. It shall make me free from this stupid love that follows me through ages!”

Oleg’s eyes showed deep sympathy. He clasped her to himself, patted the back of his head with his huge palm gently, as if she were an offended child. “Will they try to stop me again?”

“You crushed them all,” she replied quietly. “The rest of the Counsel do not interfere.”

“No more tricks?” he asked.

“No, you bloody winner…”

As he kept patting her, the fingertips of his left hand ran along her elegant girdle. Their eyes met for a moment. The sorcerer smirked wider. He took out a hairpin, as thin as a needle, his fingers cracked it. The broken halves tinkled against the floor, turned into a poisonous smoke that melted away

A golden comb flashed in Oleg’s right hand. Her gleaming hair, as black as raven wings, came down on her straight back in a released fall of black gold. Oleg dropped the comb uncaringly. Thomas gasped. The comb turned into a lizard, orange as melted gold, with a reared comb from the back of its head to the tip of its tail. Its red eyes blazed with malice like coals. Baring its teeth, the lizard darted to the sorcerer’s boot, but he stepped on it quickly with another foot. There was a faint pop, as though a fish bladder were burst. Small spiders scattered out from under his double sole, dashed to hide beneath the stones.

Oleg laughed, took precious earrings out of the woman’s pink ears made for kisses, tossed them down on the ground before Thomas, then a brooch, bracelets, hairpins, rings. At last Oleg took a necklace off her neck tenderly. The knight, bathing in vile sweat of terror, jumped like a hare, his iron soles knocked the hellish creatures into the rocky ground, trampled down, squashed, destroyed.

When he also smashed the necklace, which turned out to be a tiny basilisk spitting out fire and poisonous arrows, the woman asked innocently, “Sir knight, did this hypocrite tell you that your beautiful Constantinople shall fall under the blows of his sons?.. It shall be ruined forever, along with all the Eastern Roman Empire.”

Oleg was convulsed. “Do you mean to hurt him?.. Alas, she speaks truth, Sir Thomas. She bore a hero who will give rise to a new nation… I recall giving him the name of Seljuk.”

The woman laughed triumphantly, as she made herself comfortable in the ring of strong arms, settled on his broad chest.

Oleg, with his eyes grievous, nodded at the setting sun. “Sir Thomas, we set off in the morning! Come what may, here goes! I’ll see you to Britain. I just want a look at the glorious ancestors of the future nation that will have the blood of Ruses, the battle fever of berserks, the soft sensitivity and reason of Germans, the cheerfulness of Franks, the courage of Irish… I want to see the people who will have the brightest light of the Holy Grail!”

Still embracing the small woman, he led her to the dark cave entrance. At some moment the woman seemed to make a move away but the strong arm kept holding her narrow shoulders and she went limp, clung to him like a supple vine to a mighty oak.

Thomas twisted, guessing how he could express his apprehension delicately. That’s no woman but a full armory. Oleg and Gulcha were already at the cave threshold when Thomas yelled at the top of his voice, as if he were storming the Tower of David again. “Sir wonderer! Oleg! If last time… Seljuk, what now? Think about the future! Or your victory will become a defeat…”

Oleg looked back. The knight was clasping the Holy Grail with both hands at his iron chest. He had the eyes of a scared deer. The petite woman stopped. For a while the wonderer stood thoughtful: maybe he was thinking about the future. The woman felt his hesitation, cuddled up to him with her whole body. “Future?” Oleg asked vacantly. “Off chance it will come right.”

The last thing Thomas could see — while the wonderer could not — was that her hand, the one remained free, darted to the luxurious mane of her hair, tore out a pitch-dark single hair, and threw aside. Then the couple vanished in the black gape of the cave.

Thomas stopped breathing. The single hair transformed imperceptibly into a snake, as black as sin. It stirred, went crawling to the cave entrance. Thomas jumped after it. A champ under his boots, a splatter of dark stinky blood. Thomas trampled down for a while to make it sure, spreading the black flesh, bones, and even skin on the stones, then wiped his soles clean with disgust. His heart pounded as if he were a hare caught by a wolf.

He sat down near the entrance, set the bare sword up menacingly at his feet. The wonderer won’t beat off a gnat now. I must guard. His thoughts floundered fussily around the tribe that would ruin Constantinople in centuries to come. Then a burning question flashed: what would the people who come of him, highborn Angle Thomas Malton of Gisland, be like? Where, in which unknown land would they create their unprecedented state? Would his descendants bear some resemblance to him, a modest knight errant?

Well, I’m not likely to find it out until morning comes. The creation of new tribes and nations must be time-consuming.

###

About the author

Born in Kharkiv, USSR in 1939, Yury Nikitin has changed 32 jobs before writing his first novel about foundry workers. Soon after that, his name got blacklisted for many years, but in the post-Communist Russia he became one of the most famous and best-selling writers in fantasy and science fiction. Today Yury Nikitin is the author of more than 60 novels, distinctive by their captivating style, action-packed storylines, elaborated half-historical half-mythological background, and characters who evolve and transform as unpredictably as real people do.

You may contact Yury Nikitin online at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ury.nikitin

Bonus: The Secret of Stonehenge, Sample Chapter

If you enjoyed The Grail of Sir Thomas, look out for The Secret of Stonehenge, the next book in the series, also by Yury Nikitin. Soon at Smashwords!

With the first peal, all the four gates of Kiev began to creak. Bearded guards, sleepy and angry, dug the heels of their metal-tipped boots into the ground with strain and groaned, applying themselves to strong wooden folds. The Great City was opening to the world.

The powerful sound of bells, as thick as frozen oatmeal kissel, flowed unhurriedly along the paved streets of the city, squeezed into the closed shutters, woke people up.

From the city center to the western gate, with a ringing clatter of hooves on the paving, two riders came on tall warhorses. They looked like two mounted towers. The first one was clad in steel armor from top to toe, in the way of noble Franks. The second one could be taken for his squire or servant if he was dressed better. No knight would tolerate a servant in a wolfskin jack, with a simple bow on his back and a rough club, looking out of his saddle bag, instead of a proper weapon!

The guards greeted the knight, their voices hoarse after a sleepless night they spent drinking with him at a local inn. The foreign guest had been paying, they’d called wantons and had fun with them, roared songs, played for money, arms and boots (by morning no one could recall what he owed others, so everyone just took his own things). And what a party without a good scuffle? They scuffled much and willingly, enjoyed themselves, so now one has his eye swollen, another his lips thick as flapjacks, and the third one is unable to get out of the sentry box. But that was good fun!

Oleg gave a slack nod, though no one bellowed greetings to him. He was avoided and a bit afraid of. A silent one, unhurried and reserved. Never carousing, never drinking, he still looked able to stand for himself. His exorbitant strength could only be missed by a child or a blind man, and the guards of the gate were neither.

Thomas held his horse, alerted. The way through the gate is blocked by three stocky, beastly-looking common men. All watch him closely, with searching eyes. They look no warriors, but their moves show big strength, they resemble mighty bulls who grew in the open. One said something and went straight on Thomas.

“Don’t strike at once!” the wonderer whispered. “First we’ll find out what they want.”

The man stopped in front of Thomas, and the knight felt uneasy. The common man has broad shoulders and looks as hard as a rock, his arms strong enough to crush the knight’s armor like the bark of a rotten stump. His sharp eyes under the overhanging superciliary arches, heavy like mountain ridges, look in some aiming, demanding way.

Two other men came slowly to flank Thomas. They smelled strongly of beer and home brew. All the three looked like woodcutters or stonemasons: the kind who break both tree trunks and blocks of stone with bare hands.

Thomas cast anxious glances around. The wonderer kept his gloomy looks: a mysterious glitter in his green eyes, the iron hoop keeping his red hair on the forehead. He also looks like a wild woodcutter or stonemason, but he’s beside me. Not blocking my way.

The common man asked in a deep strong voice that sounded like a roar of an old bear woken up, “Are you… from overseas?”

“You guessed right,” Thomas answered in a constrained voice.

“If from overseas,” the common man roared, keeping his eyes in Thomas, “you’ve seen more than those who stay at home…”

“Who would argue?” Thomas said in a guarded way. “As one wise traveler put it, he who made a walk around his house is wiser than he who never stepped outside.”

The common man made a nervous swallow, his stentorian voice broke, a begging note appeared in it, “Yes, that’s just what I’m talking about. Please tell us, dear guest, give your advice… How to make Rus’ better?”

Thomas wanted to spit down to the other man’s feet, his own legs still trembling so that they made his horse sway, his heart pounding like a hare’s, but there were such grief and anguish in the common man’s voice that Thomas only grunted, “Sir wonderer, let’s get out of this mad land. Don’t they see they are living here, not I? I’d give them a pretty good advice!”

“Rude you,” Oleg complained. “Though a noble!”

They left the gate behind, their horses walked briskly on the morning dew. The sky was clean as a shelled egg and blue as baby’s eyes, the air fresh as it usually is in the mornings. The day is going to be warm, though the trees along the road have already put on their autumn gold and purple.

The knight, Sir Thomas Malton of Gisland, listened to the church bells piously, crossed himself slowly, with diligence. Oleg frowned, green eyes went dark. A strange faith, made for the slaves of Rome, is growing stronger and stronger in my free nation. Though with fire and blood, hundreds of villages burnt, sorcerers being killed and crucified, along with those who refused to name themselves slaves of a foreign lord, even the one of Heaven.

Rus’ seems to have had no slaves before, no habit for slavery, but, just imagine, only few ones dare to protest openly now. The bravest men stay put in the villages where the Old Faith remains, and sorcerers only make their heathen temples in the thick of woods. Looks like our souls have much of timidity if a man makes no attempt to knife the one who insults him to his face: You are a slave of the Heavenly Lord…

Oleg’s horse, after having a good sleep and food in Kiev, was eager to break into gallop. The rider had to hold him, looking back at Thomas. The knightly stallion is no fit for gallop: too heavy, and his rider is like a tower of steel. He’d only gallop fifty sazhens, then a full stop: just stand and slash. That’s enough to cleave any lines like an axe. And the breach is penetrated by foots: those always follow a knight in crowds, as if chasing a furious bear.

The strong fresh wind hit in their faces. The sorcerer’s red hair went flickering, as though a blazing torch he carried in gallop. Behind Thomas, a white cloak, the color of swan’s wing, was blown up and stretched quivering. The huge red cross on the white heralded proudly that the knight was not just a knight but the one of the Christ’s host that had freed the Holy Sepulcher valiantly from the impious Saracens.

“On the way again,” Thomas said in a fine manly voice. “What is a man born for if not for traveling?”

Oleg looked askew at the knight’s proud face. In his long life, he’d heard this question many times before. And many answers to it. All convincing, but all different. “Haven’t you swapped the cup for drink?”

Thomas felt his bag hastily. The cup’s roundish side escaped his fingers for a while, his heart missed a beat. “Sir wonderer,” he said with displeasure, “I not only haven’t swapped it for drink but haven’t lost at dice either! Though I’ve seen noble knights… yes, the ones of the highest birth, lose at dice not just money, horse and weapons but their wives and castles! They even lost more than castles: their own names! That’s the power of Satan, his skill to entrap weak souls…”

“But you played,” Oleg teased. “And all the games, according to the doctrine of yours, were invented by Satan. They say it was why your god threw him down: Satan used to win every game…”

Thomas said with dignity, “Sir wonderer, I don’t think Sir God would have won no game if he really sat down to play with the vile devil. But I think He’d not even sit down near him in the latrine. Sir Satan might have been cheating. Though no, that’s too… As it was when Sir Satan used to sit on Our Lord’s right and was not yet the sort he became on earth.”

He crossed himself piously. Oleg laughed. “Oh yes. He’s lived on earth among people for a while, and he who lies down with dogs, gets up with fleas.”

Thomas looked puzzled. “Do you want to say Satan became that vile after he mixed with people? Though… why not? Man is no angel but he’s craving for light, and devil in his spite was getting lower and lower until he became worse than man. Then he also began to provoke man into becoming worse.”

“Exactly. And games remained his domain.”

“So I clashed him! As befits a valiant knight: in my opponent’s field, and I also left the choice of weapons to him. I played that impious game, won, swapped my prize for drink, as it’s dishonorable to buy any good thing for such money, played again and won again! So I treated those men to drinks… That was how I put the devil to shame.”

Oleg twisted his head with delight. “Great! This doctrine… or faith will go far if it allows such an interpretation of knightly revels that outstrip even sailors on their loose. Have you bought horse for the money you won?”

“A horse is allowed,” the knight replied severely.

“Why?”

“From the height of his saddle, I’m strengthening the true faith. Such a horse can be no instrument of devil. Just look how handsome he is!.. Sir wonderer, are you sure we’ll have to ride through forest?”

“All Europe is covered with dark forest. And your Britain too. There are no Saracen deserts you’ve got used to. Wherever you ride here, you’ll have to ride in wild woods. But it’s autumn now, the roads already trodden. In spring there’s no way to walk, nor to ride…”

“Trodden by whom?”

“First by tramps like us: all sorts of beggars, knight-errants, outcasts and madmen, then by plain tradespeople.”

Thomas crossed himself. “Let it be forest then. I simply don’t like those shaggy men with knives, just like you, jumping out of shrubs. I give a start then, which is unworthy of a knight. Unworthy of me, as I have stormed the Tower of David, fought on the walls of Jerusalem…”

The forest was growing ahead: thick, wild, impassable. The path ducked under the low branches and vanished at once, as though in a badger’s barrow. Coolness was felt within hundred sazhens from the wall of trees. Their mighty trunks were dark, squat, gloomy. Even their dense crowns looked darker than usual.

* * *

They rode all the day long, only at noon allowed their horses a brief rest and had a snack themselves without making a fire.

“What’s the name of this country?” Thomas wondered.

Oleg was surprised. “What’s wrong with your memory? I’ve told you: Rus’.”

“I see that,” Thomas dismissed, “but it was Rus’ yesterday and even the day before… And whose land are we crossing today?”

Oleg hemmed. “You’ll get your tongue tired of asking that. You may ride a horse, crawl a snail, or fly a bird — anyway it will be Rus’ tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. And princedoms… All of them belong to Rurikids. One brother has this one, another has that, the third one has the third… All taken together, they make Rus’. The Rus’ of Rurikids.”

Thomas was silent, looked disbelieving. At last he spoke with doubt, “Marvelous are the works of God… In our host, there was a unit of valiant Sir Rodoslav, a brave warrior and merry knight. His men were known for strength, discipline, martial skill. Everyone marveled that they stood any hardships without a grumble. Now I recall: they had the same arms and armor I see here. Does it mean they came from this land?”

“Probably even from this very city. Vyatichi, for instance, also had a part in those campaigns, but they use other kinds of equipment.”

Thomas was astonished. “Do Vyatichi come from here too? I’d have never thought so. I thought they were Vikings. They stood to the Duke of Tuleb’s left, covering the flank of King Henry Bluetooth. Brave and fierce warriors as well! Your works are marvelous indeed, O Lord!”

While saddling the horses, Thomas imagined the far way they had to make, all those woods, marshes, cities and villages ahead, sighed and said vexedly, “That’s what I can’t fathom: you are a wizard of considerable power and you don’t use it! Except when pushed to the wall. And even then you’d often rather die than use magic. For me, it looks like having two fast horses and walking on foot in their dust! You are already doomed to Hell’s fire! What’s more to fear?”

He expected no reply from the wonderer who used to avoid such talks, but now the sorcerer was in good spirits. He laughed. “I could say that’s a vow. It would explain everything to you, wouldn’t it?”

“Er…”

“Well, that’s really a kind of vow. Though not to demons: forget that. It’s a vow I made to myself.”

“But why?”

“How shall I put it… Just imagine: I also want to reach the kingdom of heaven. And I’m going the right way. But each use of magic is throwing me back into the darkness. Magic is impious… not quite in the way you see it, but you grasp the general meaning right. Magic is based on implicit faith, and I hate implicit faith. Magic is not less slavish than Christianity. Every time I save my bacon with magic, I feel disgraced. You are right: sometimes it’s better to die than be rescued by those you struggle against…”

Thomas looked with wide open eyes. “Then you have more knighthood than any paladin of the Round Table!”

“Thomas, actually I would endure any shame or disgrace, as I’ve endured many things before, but the use of magic tramples on more than life. It tramples with dirty hooves on the very purport of my being! On what I live for.”

It was like the sky opening over Thomas. The wonderer appeared to bear his own cross, which he, a knight and Christ’s warrior, could hardly imagine! I only saw and felt the very edge of it and I was dumbfounded. A dangerous man’s riding with me. Really dangerous…

By evening the breeze dropped, the fragrances of late herbs and fallen leaves hung in the still air. The huge crimson ball was subsiding slowly to the edge of the earth. Coal-black shadows moved on the dark-red ground ahead of the riders, grew longer, merged with the shadows of rocks, stones, and trees. The world was wild and unknown: only the two of them and their horses seemed alive in it.

The sky darkened gradually. At first there came a barely visible crescent, then a star flashed on, and another one. Now Thomas and Oleg rode under the deep-blue cup, its lip rested on the brinks of earth.

By night, in a sparse birch forest, they bumped into some merchants. Those had put their loaded carts in a circle, kindled a fire, fetched the brushwood: a thorough preparation for night, to avoid any surprise…

There was a big caldron gurgling and ringing its lid on a tripod, and some dark broad slices roasted on the barked twigs over the hot coals. The smell of roast meat with exotic spices burnt their nostrils. Thomas gulped saliva down noisily, and his stallion mended a pace at once, as if he wanted to eat the meat before his master did. “Greetings to you, noble sires,” Thomas proclaimed into the space: he obviously did not know how to address merchants. “Pax vobis. God bless you!”

The merchants watched them with interest. One stood up. “The same to you, if you mean it. I’ve never seen a priest in steel before! It’s night, so you may stay with us. We’ll protect you.”

Thomas went crimson and began to puff up, but Oleg said meekly, “Thank you, good people. We’ll spent the night with you.”

“Have you made a long way?”

“Very long.”

The merchants asked no more questions. If a man can’t or doesn’t want to speak, he should not be forced. One must not count money in the pockets of others, as many like to do. Neither one should pump others for what he wants to know. They’ll tell you if they like.

Thomas took some lard and a head of cheese out of his bags: it doesn’t befit to eat only the food of others and hide what you have. The merchants found a skin of brew, and it went from hand to hand around the fire. After the meal, they started a cautious conversation about who the travelers were and where they were heading for.

Questions were asked in a way that allowed to evade easily. You never know whom you may meet in woods, so you’d better hurt no one. It’s the time of trouble: princes lay hands on everything, foreign missionaries scour around, some trying to win people over to another faith, others persuading princes into close unions with either Kazimir or the Polovtsians, or whatever other dark and far-going aims they have. We merchants can’t always see our benefit at once, so we’d better offend no one but watch, listen, and sniff for whatever we can gain from all that stuff.

When the skin got half empty, they began a sedate and wise talk about how to make Rus’ better, how to live right, how to bring peace and order at last to the lands that had always been in disorder, where the order was only promised, to where long ago they’d even called Germans, in hope they would make order, but even Germans failed: it was Rus’, no Deutschland of theirs.

The wonderer squirmed, then asked, “Germans? Was Rurik a German?”

“A Kraut,” the merchant confirmed, then thought for a while, scratched his head. “Or a Yid. No way to know for sure.”

At the height of the revelry, when Thomas was going to try his luck in game, as play and way is where people show their true colors, in play and bath everyone is equal, playing is not stealing — there was a sudden rustle in the tree tops. The air went trembling, some blue sparks flashed and died out at once. Branches broke with a crunch, as a bough… not, a whole log was falling onto the ground.

The log tumbled down and appeared to be hollow inside. Before anyone could say knife, a lean and tiny old woman got out of there, like a giant bark beetle. Her face was wrinkled like a baked apple, she had no teeth but her eyes were sharp. She dusted off hastily: wooden crumbs were stuck in her shaggy grey hair, as if she were really gnawing at the wood. “Hail to everyone,” she said quickly. “Don’t be afraid, I shan’t hurt you. For some reason, I feel really sated today. I’ll only warm by the fire if you don’t mind.”

The eldest merchant made a hiccup, forced out, “We don’t… We don’t mind it at all. Not at all!”

The old woman came closer. She was clad in rags hanging from her body like the wings of an old bat used to sleeping among cobwebs. Her pin-sharp eyes measured at once the motionless figures of Thomas and Oleg. Thomas kept his palm alerted on the hilt of two-handed knightly sword. There was a nail from Christ’s cross in it, hammered deeply. The nail sprinkled with the noblest blood has the power to protect against all the crafty designs by devil and his servants. Surely, it would only protect those who’s devoted in their faith. My chaplain promised that. Oh shit, it’s another sword I have now!

“The news of the two of you have spread over all the earth.”

Oleg, finishing the stale slice of cheese, objected with his mouth full, “Hardly all of it!”

“All of ours,” the old woman specified.

“Sit down, warm your bones. A knowing woman?”

“Now they call me witch. People know nothing about the old knowledge and us who keep it. And they don’t want to know.”

Oleg clenched his jaws. Again, like many times before, ignorance comes into the world with triumph. In past, literacy could be promoted by force, but this new faith of the weak and poor in spirit proclaims those weak, dirty, and ignorant the most pleasing to the new god. And literacy is from devil. Beat and burn the literate!

Thomas looked with disgust. He didn’t cross himself (it did not befit a man to be afraid of a woman, even a witch) but set aside, lest he touch her by accident with his iron elbow and get his armor rusty.

The witch lifted her hands. A rustle in the tree tops again, crunch and fall of boughs. The merchants darted sideways. A patterned tablecloth spread on the green grass, some narrow-necked jugs, the likes of which Oleg had only seen in Hellas, tumbled on the ground. Two colossal winebowls, one of home brew, another of heady mead, emerged silently, small scoops plopped down, and in the middle of the tablecloth, moving other things aside, a roast boar appeared with an apple in mouth.

“Paganism!” Thomas said with disgust. “Devil’s work!”

“Don’t eat,” Oleg suggested.

“What next,” Thomas was insulted. “Devil might think I’m afraid of his servants!” He was the first to take out a dagger (narrow and very sharp, the only fit thing to finish off a knocked-down knight by thrusting the blade into his visor slit), stabbed the boar with joy, as though taking a Saracen’s life. There came a smell of fragrant meat. The boar was young and juicy. It seemed to be no forest animal but the one fattened in the warm and care, with milk and fresh bread.

Oleg, laughing up his sleeve, snatched the slices of roast meat from the fire. The merchants exchanged glances and reached for scoops. The eldest one pushed his cross deeper into his collar, scooped the brew at once and took a slice of meat from Oleg, tasted the brew, listened to himself. A contented smile appeared on his face.

The merchants ate and drank the witch’s treat with caution at first, but when the brew got into heads, there were born Pagans drinking and bellowing songs by the fire. One even raised the hag to dance, and when some yellow eyes, definitely not wolfish, started to gleam from behind the trees in the night, no one caught at his cross. The eldest one even made an inviting gesture: the tablecloth would feed everyone if the hag spoke truth. In the night woods we are all brothers.

When the embracing merchants bellowed obscene songs, the witch turned to Oleg and Thomas. Her voice fell to a whisper. “What have you done?”

“And what have you heard?” Oleg asked back.

The witch paid no heed to him. Her small sharp eyes were piercing Thomas.“What do thou bear… with thee or in thee, that thou are spoken about even in the High mountains?”

Thomas hesitated, glanced at sir wonderer. Oleg said in a louder voice, “What does it matter to you? Eavesdropping is bad.”

The witch looked him over with disdain. “Tell me… Are thou with him?”

“I am. What did you hear?”

The witch turned her piercing eyes on the knight again. “They are rather afraid of something. Bad sound, but I grasped they were sending to stop you…”

“They came to stop me,” Thomas grunted.

“And what?”

“They’ll come to no other place. Unless dragged by devils.”

The witch examined him with growing interest. She ignored the knight’s irritation, Oleg understood why. An ignorant angel. Just a child, however big and strong he looks. A capricious, quick-tempered child of the new world. Not the best one: still a long time before we can see what this world is truly worth, so now it’s simply new. How can one be angry with a child? “Very proud words… And thou are not the one who cringes. That’s laudable.”

“He cringes,” Oleg said venomously. “Before no dragon but before the cross, bones, splinters, a footprint in stone… He also spits over shoulder, crosses himself often, whispers, crooks his fingers behind, scared of something like a hare.”

“So superstitious?” the witch wondered.

“He also believes in dreams and sneeze, in a black cat, a woman with empty buckets, a priest on the way, and Friday, the thirteenth…”

Thomas sniffed angrily. He feared no visible enemy: God was his witness, as well as the Saracens he’d defeated. But the faith tells us to be afraid of the invisible enemy, the Archfiend!

The witch snapped her fingers, raised her hands. Two big broad cups fell from above, the witch caught them deftly, lest they touch the ground. The brims of those cups were a dim shimmer in the firelight. Thomas detected that both were bound with old silver.

Oleg took a cup from her, smirked, glanced at Thomas. Then looked at the cup again, shook his head when his eyes met the witch’s. She waved aside with negligence: drink, don’t make difficulties! Look at your friend who doesn’t mind anything…

Meanwhile, Thomas drained his cup and poured some rough wine from the jug: the boar was sprinkled with eastern spices, so the knight’s mouth was burning. He tossed off, then tasted some mead (he’d got to know its taste and charm in Kiev), gulped it down with some more wine and filled the cup again at once.

Oleg had no wish to speak in front of merchants. They are listening, glancing at each other. In their trade one may drink, even get drunk, but for the one who loses head his first trip as a merchant will be his last. And those were tough, experienced trade wolves. Even too tough for such a simple market trip from one princedom into another.

Anticipating the witch’s new question, Oleg asked them respectfully, “Oh, you have made a really long way! You’ve seen countries far away and people overseas! You’ve beheld with your own eyes what we only know from songs, which the new faith orders to name byliny. Please tell us about the wonderful things you’ve seen in your last voyage!”

Flattery makes even the wisest one stupid. For some reason Rod left this to be a human’s vulnerable place, one of many. The merchant’s sharp eyes went oily and dull at once. Stroking his luxurious beard, the eldest one said grandly, “We’ve seen tall towers of Bagdad and the sea as blue as sky. We’ve seen sands and strange animals. We’ve beheld the world where winter brings no snow, where people are black like tar or coal! We’ve seen mighty tribes in which even chieftains walk around naked and eat humans…”

The witch shook her head. “How awful! Thou must be lying! Where can such beasts live?”

“Faraway… But the greatest wonder happened on our way back, across the scorching sands. Our party was few, as we’d sold everything save three horses, not to mention two carts with gifts for our kin… The road was said to be safe and empty, so we let our guards go. There were just a couple of versts to the city, and we rode, happy with our close return to Rus’…”

He sighed, wiped his forehead. A ghost of fear flickered in his eyes, as he went through something hard again. “And when we already could see the city walls, some robbers attacked us out of the blue. Two dozens of them against the three of us. Each of us can stand up to two, or even three if he gets angry, and that’s not a boast, but the third of us was ill then. We carried him in a cart, and in two we could not…”

“Come on!”

The merchant said with delight, “That would have been our end if not the marvelous warrior who came at the very last moment! He was like a menacing lightning in God’s hand. His stallion was black, with mane and tail flying in the wind, the sword in his hand shone like the brightest star in the sky of Bagdad. When he dashed on the villains, the ground moaned and a flock of black crows soared behind…”

“Which crows?” Thomas didn’t get it.

“The clods of earth thrown up by his stallion’s hooves! The warrior uttered a scary shout. Many villains collapsed, and the rest had their legs turned water. And when the warrior came on them with his sword raised, only five dared to attack him.”

“Come on,” Thomas asked impatiently.

The merchant took a breath. His chest straightened proudly, as if it were him fighting those villains. “He threw all five down with three strikes! I don’t know how he managed it, but I saw three terrible blows, after which the grass in ten sazhens around was splashed with blood and the villains lay like slashed ram carcasses. The hero did not bother to dismount. Just smiled, wiped his sword, and turned his horse. In vain we cried after him, wanted to pay homage, offered money and rich gifts for our miraculous rescue! He didn’t even say his name. Fortunately, one of us had seen him before and recognized him!”

Thomas asked with respect, “So who was that marvelous warrior, as much modest as he is valiant? The world has few knights endowed with such wonderful virtues. I thought all of them used to sit at the Round Table.”

The merchant said solemnly, “It was Michael Uryupinets himself!”

The wonderer gave an understanding nod. He seemed to have heard of this valiant hero. The merchant crossed himself piously, Thomas did the same. Both looked at each other with patronizing negligence: what can be expected from a fool?

Actually, each of them looked a boor from the point of view of another: one made a cross from the right shoulder, while another from the left. They did not know that the first one would later be called an Orthodox and the second one a Catholic.

* * *

With drunken surprise, the merchants peeped into the winebowls that never grew lighter. Finally, the youngest man turned one over: a scanty splash of brew came out and vanished before it could reach the ground. At once the winebowl got empty, even dry, as if it were held over the fire. The ill-starred merchant failed to shake even a single drop out. He got it in the neck, and the second winebowl was now handled with care: they all but bowed to it.

The boar managed to sate everyone, so quickly it gained new meat on: juicy and odorous, already roast and larded with garlic and onions. The eldest one appeared to be the most enduring: he ate and drank for twelve, loosened his belt, then took it off. His friends leaned back one by one, fell drunkenly asleep, one began to snore with a bone in hand. The witch took the bone out carefully, put into the bag on her belt. Oleg saw it and nodded. She slipped up. Did not consider the merchants have not the same toothless gums as hers. Her yellow stubs of teeth would only take off small fibers of meat, but men’s strong teeth, in search of marrow, have grinded what the boar can’t be resurrected without. She’ll have to look for a stronger spell, as getting a new pig is more difficult. And she may fail in it: the ancient skill of sorcery is going, and it will never return.

When the eldest merchant gave up, fell on his back and began to snore, only Thomas and Oleg remained by the magic tablecloth. The witch ate almost nothing, while the knight and the wonderer satiated themselves in a manly way, unhurried and sedate, with a skill to get their fill in advance, like old wolves do.

The witch looked sideways: no strange ears, just merchants sleeping heavily. “So who’s watching you?”

“They were,” Thomas corrected proudly. “Now devils watch them. And put firewood under their pots.”

“Put where?” the witch didn’t get it.

Oleg explained condescendingly, “It’s from their doctrine of afterlife. Never mind.”

“Oh,” the witch drawled. “Some new faith? Well, there were plenty of those… Off chance this one won’t last too. You’ve crushed some foes, but what about others?”

“No others,” Thomas replied angrily, wounded by what the witch had said about Christ’s holiest faith. “We’ve crushed those godless villains.”

“In fact they were Christians,” Oleg did not fail to sting.

“Crushed all?” the witch disbelieved.

“Killed the chiefs. And the flock, if they had any, will disperse. Who’s to come out against us if we defeated the strongest?”

The witch watched the young knight with regret: proud and happy he was, in raptures over his victory. He kept his chest was thrown out and his shoulders squared, as if the king were already favoring him, presenting with bounties. He doesn’t know yet that nature abhors a vacuum.

Copyright

Copyright 1994 Yury Nikitin

English translation 2013 Ingrid Wolf

Cover art 2013 Denis DeNeWeR Petrov

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed, provided it remains in its complete original form, and the reader is not charged to access it.

Endnotes

1

In the original text Oleg names himself kalika [kali’ka], which is a Russian word for pilgrim and wanderer. Since late Middle Ages, it was mostly used to mean a vagrant beggar singer of religious songs, especially the one physically impaired (Russian word kaleka [kale’ka], meaning a cripple, derived from it). Also, kalika is a character of Russian mythology. In some legends, they have great physical strength and perform heroic deeds and wonders. In non-fictional contexts, kalika is commonly translated into English as simply pilgrim, but that does not encompass the full scope of meanings conveyed in this fiction book and explained above, so the word wonderer was adopted instead to convey the original message as close as possible. (The references here and after by translator)

2

Rus’, or Kievan Rus’, is a Slavic state that existed in NE Europe, on the present-day territories of Ukraine, Belorussia and Western Russia, between the 8th and the 14th centuries AC.

3

Targitai is a legendary hero and ancestor of Scythians (mentioned by Herodotus and Diodorus). Koloksai is a legendary prince of Scythia, son to Targitai.

4

The word ustye [u’stje] also stands for the mouth of the river in Russian language today. The theory of the common Scythian roots of Russian, English and many other European and Asian nations advocated by Oleg here and forth in this book is one of many all-likely-to-be-true hypotheses in contemporary historical research in Russia and other countries.

5

A legendary northern land described by Herodotus and many other ancient writers. The author identifies it with the territories once occupied by Kievan Rus’ and now belonging to Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia.

6

Justinian I the Great (483–565), Byzantine Emperor in 527–65. His Slavic origin implied by this book is rather a legend than a historical fact.

7

Old Russian name for Constantinople.

8

Scythia is an ancient region of SE Europe and Asia. The Scythian empire, which existed between the 8th and 2nd centuries BC, was centered on the northern shores of the Black Sea and extended from southern Russia to the borders of Persia.

9

An old Russian measure of weight (about 16.4 kg).

10

An old Russian measure of length (about 1.1 km)

11

Khazars are Turkic people who occupied a large part of southern Russia from the 6th to the 11th centuries and who converted to Judaism in the 9th century. The existence and ways of Hazars are entirely the author’s imagination.

12

In fact, Buddha was born in 563 BC and Mahomet in 570 AC.

13

A hint on the well-known in Russia saying by Otto Bismarck, “The Russian man harnesses the horse slowly but drives fast.”

14

The five-pointed star is considered to be a Masonic symbol. Later, it became the official symbol of Communists who put five-pointed stars on the tops of five towers of Moscow Kremlin in 1935-37. Those stars were removed in the 1990s.

15

Old Russian name for Byzantines.

16

Theodora (500–48), Byzantine Empress, wife to Justinian I.

17

Old Russian name for British Isles.

18

A well-known hero of Russian epic.

19

Agathyrs, Gelon, and Scyth are legendary Scythian heroes, sons (or, by other versions, grandsons) of Targitai. According to the legend, Scyth was the only one of three brothers who succeeded in drawing Targitai’s bow, so he and his people remained in Scythia, while his brothers led their tribes away to settle down in other lands. The colonization of great caves by Agathyrs and his people is the author’s assumption.

20

Vladimir I the Great (958–1015), a Grand Prince of Kiev, ruler of Kievan Rus’ in 980–1015. Originally a Slavic pagan, he converted to Christianity in 988 and Christianized the Kievan Rus’. His having hundreds of wives and concubines while a Pagan is a historical fact.

21

Slavic tribes who lived to the north of the Black Sea between 4th and 7th century AD were named Antes by Byzantine writers of that time.

22

Herodotus (484–425 BC) wrote about giant ants who, in his opinion, lived in Scythia.

23

Sazhen is an old Russian measure of length (about 2.16 m).

24

“To pass Crimea and Rome” and “to have seen [spent a night under] the priest’s pear tree” are well-known Russian sayings about a person who has seen much of life (e.g. because he or she has traveled a lot) and who is supposed to be very experienced and worldly-wise.

25

A small river near Kiev. In the waters of Pochayna, Prince Vladimir performed the christening of all Kievins in 988 AC.

26

Here and below, Oleg retells a Greek legend.

27

The ancient Russian writing (“lines and cuts”) and ancient Celtic writing actually look very similar at a glance. However, the possibility and probability of their common origin is an issue of debate in present-day academic literature.

28

In 1113 AC, there was a great riot of Kievins against the unjust economic and tax policy carried out by the administration of late Prince Svyatopolk. The riot was suppressed, but afterwards the next prince, Vladimir Monomakh, took some measures to ease the tax burden.

Content

Yury Nikitin
THE GRAIL OF SIR THOMAS

PART I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

PART II

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

About the author

Bonus: The Secret of Stonehenge, Sample Chapter

Copyright

Endnotes