by Yury Nikitin
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 the 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 combined with axes and even cleavers.
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 the 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 on by a 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 the 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 a 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 the 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 to the true faith. Do you know the way out?”
“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 all fours in places, Thomas prayed to 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 men. They had swollen excruciations instead of branches and no leaves at all. Dark streams moved slowly within the trees, exfoliated, twisted into caudate rings.
Among the strange trees, there were slowly rambling ants, strange too; slow, translucent, their insides 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 fall down to the cut, drain all of it, and walk away slowly, his swollen belly dragged on the ground.
Unknown animals sometimes darted among the ghostly trees. So monstrous those creatures were that poor Thomas had his hair stand on ends from the insoluble question: could God have created such an abomination himself? The Devil definitely could do it but, as far as Thomas knew, the Almighty created all the world himself, no part left to the Devil…
“Keep up,” Oleg said through gritted teeth. “You get stuck as though at the fair!”
“But monsters…”
“Domestic animals.”
“Domestic?”
“Room animals if it please you. Room or cave. Even gods might have forgotten what antes bred these animals for. Antes may have forgotten that too. Either for fun or work or hunt…”
Thomas squeezed himself against the wall to let the 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 we’re 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 a 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 out. 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 the 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 the 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 his head or shoulders, as he did constantly, earth and small pebbles fell down. Once there came a shower of dirty water that 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 a 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 to 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 somehow; he kept warning of pits and ledges with his voice. Sometimes he gripped Thomas in the dark, which made him scream in fright, dragged him 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 a 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 an illusion; 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 wide eyes looking into 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 the 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 view 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 chirruping warily near Thomas. The knight looked there; the tiny green singer was seated on a grass blade a foot from his face. The creature was fat, potbellied. He cast guarded looks at the giant monster but persisted in moving his jagged leg on the edge of a hard wing.
Thomas smiled, being moved by that. The grasshopper is definitely afraid; his big eyes wide in fright, his feelers trembling with fear, but he chirrups his song, upholding his territory, his lands, his castle, bravely against the intruding monster. Thomas moved away carefully. If he frightens 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 spreading the dirt over. “Surrounded by a 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 the 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 was 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 to his feet, dragged together some dry twigs, which he found close by 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 caught 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 the 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 the Anglic way since he was a child. Before the water boiled, he came back carrying five big fish and two score 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 and his mortal agony, in some imperceptible way, started to turn into gentle sorrow.
Once he cleaned the small fish, he threw them into the boiling water. He slashed a sweet juice-dripping stripe out of the big fat river animal, sliced it, sprinkled it with the strange grey salt of Agathyrsians and, while the fish soup was cooked, he chewed that raw juicy meat. He chewed, screwing up his face with joy, his mouth squelching and champing, heavy drops of limpid juice hanging in the corners of it.
The water in the kettle began 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 contentment, feeling his grief not that gnawing anymore. It will come right in the end, as the wonderer puts it. By 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 constantly, lest the anguish come back to claw his soul. It will come right, it will all come right in the end. Does 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? By 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 at the knight’s strange skill; if not for the poor devil’s misfortune to be born a knight, he could have made a good cook. Oleg supped all of the stew, sucked big bones, 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 on 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 a hundred steps away, 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 an 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 bowstring, 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, 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 young, 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 the 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 a man’s arms and will strong, hurled them on the laid-out skin. Oleg cut the meat off hastily, rolled it into the skins, which were still bleeding, dragged it into a deep cleft. Thomas did not rack his brain over the wonderer’s plans, he gave all of himself to the amusement of a knight, as though back in 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 to explore that hole, he risked having 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-cut skins, darted away. Thomas spat angrily and had his meal in proud solitude. That time the wonderer did not turn up for 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 had got half below the skyline. The wonderer messed about with the fading fire, blew the coals up, tossed in 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 a 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 were 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 the 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 the distinct crunch of Oleg’s stiffened joints.
“Get up, brave knight! I see the great future of the 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 waited, gripping the sword hilt with both hands.
Climbing, the wonderer had 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 found his legs trembling; it was a dragon! Sir Gawain, according to the bards, 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 to 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 the screech of an 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 a frog’s or a 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 were refracted in the prominent eyes covered with a transparent film of skin. The dragon gave a roar again, started backing up and hunching. His flabby neck, in faded, shabby bony mails, wrinkled with thick folds.
