by Yury Nikitin
* * *
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 his 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 jerkin 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 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 the 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 flowed into the secret door guarded by the two men who looked 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 at times. For dinner he always ordered some roast meat with greens; a common food of Slavic shepherds, one of who he pretended to be. As he came upstairs with food for Thomas, he found the knight nervous and angry. 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 had they appeared on the threshold.
Only on the evening of the third day did he see a man whose resemblance to a smuggler was too good to be true. Oleg’s heart began fluttering. He leaned his head to the jug of wine, watching closely, out of the 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 a 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 movements that were honed in exhausting exercise with arms and hand-to-hand combat. 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 the red cross, but in the grey one of a common man. However, it was Thomas who could catch 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: the spies are on the special look-out, they’ll spot him.
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 build, clad in a rough wolfskin, was swilling 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 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 other 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 full 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 is it about me… that it 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 needed a good brawl, his mug smashed and his snot bloody, to finish his carouse normally and have a good night’s sleep. Oleg felt the agent suspecting him… but only suspecting. He needed to keep up this 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 patient malice, though the bad blood had 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 other two men coming from both sides. He made blood rush back from his face. Let them see him 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 the glass, his shaking hand started to raise it. When the glass was 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 man on his belly, without looking there, stooped, as if he expected a back header from 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, breaking his bones. Oleg, still playing the part of a drunken Viking, swung the bench, roared, swore in Sveyan and cursed in Norman, b
ut in that mad whirlwind, his eyes caught a glimpse of the 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 rise from a far table and, in no apparent hurry, walk 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 the 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 that 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 rustles, far shouts. In back alleys and streets, he saw quiet 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 the Holy Virgin, as you like…” Having said that, he sped 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 his throat, eager to fly out. Sweat showered down his body, the 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 understood 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 plodded back.
