by Yury Nikitin
Chapter 38
The wonderer was asleep so fast that he could hardly be awakened, not only by dinner but also 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 fly up 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, the dragon turned northwest, and Thomas stiffened from waiting again. Gradually, he accustomed himself to glancing down. Though his soul would freeze 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 as 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 into 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 dragon’s back, pressing down the bristled comb. He rolled overhead, his iron clanging, all but ran into his 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 its awful snout.
Thomas limped into shrubs to gather brushwood, as the sun was sinking to the horizon. When he came back with the 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. A 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 his wings and paws, with spikes peeking out of the foam, like sharp pales in a city wall. The dragon bowed down to the very water, peered very closely in, holding his breath, then suddenly struck with both paws, raising a cloud of spray. Thomas dropped the 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? The dragon has a pleasure to recall his childhood. When he was small, he lived in water… Fish were 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 his 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. Two hundred years old is a teenager…”
The teenager, with a terrible scream that made the banks tremble, was pulling out of the water a fluttering log with fins; Oleg hardly recognized it as a sheatfish. Backing up, 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 the 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 recoil in fear but plunged deeper in excitement; only his spread comb and fat bottom remained out of 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 his 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 the 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 his 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 for life, though both had the marks of claws on their heads. When he tried to grab the first one by the tail (it was dangerous to seize by the 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 onto dry land 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 his teeth. He trotted on the bank merrily, a mischievous glitter in his eyes, even the mail on his snout slightly open. As he spotted Thomas dragging a pike away by the 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 at 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 became 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 with him?” Thomas cried to him in fear.
“Where did you put the sheatfish?” Oleg cried back.
“He thinks I ate it?”
Oleg stood up, cupped his hand at his forehead. “Where is 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 for 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 from a heavy blow, the awful roar of the frantic dragon slashed his ears. The beast tried to shove his snout into the narrow slit, bellowed in disappointment. Thomas clung fast into the corner, out of strength, gasping for air among the stink of dragon’s breath, his head cracking at the terrible roar.
When the dragon fell silent for a moment, drawing in air for its 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 his helmet, as the monstrous claws scratched the stone floor just a step away. 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 two inches from his leg. He glanced back in despair, but the cave was a solid stone hollowed out; no chink for a mouse to get in or out!
When Thomas could no more discern whether it was dark from 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 the 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, not rotten, I got carried away… But I am a paladin of the 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 his 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 the silence. Thomas thought 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 coasted in. It only filled the cave, not with fresh sea breeze, but with a heavy smell of rotting meat stuck in the 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 to 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 to 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 a 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 some diligent needlework on the wolfskin jerkin lying on his lap.
“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 that it was you who advised me to help the poor animal save his fish! Well, for my kind deed… as my friend the 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 for a Christian. Though the 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. “By chance he won’t.”
Doomed, Thomas sat down near the wonderer. “By chance,” “we must go,” “it will come right,” and also “kusim,” a mysterious spell with which the wonderer went right through and won. Thomas tried to say that magic formula secretly to 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 “by chance” and go on with blind faith in one’s own good luck…
The dragon darted suddenly along the bank, jumped up to a high bank. Sitting in the hollow water, he started to claw out clots of yellow clay, with pebbles and grass, snatch them with huge his 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 of thread, bit a piece off, examined his work with satisfaction.
“But why clay?”
“He has a stomach ache. One is relieved of it by coals, another by clay… Let him have it. Today we’ll need to fly up till the evening.” He took the flint out of his bag. With a sigh, Thomas went for brushwood. He heard a mighty smack on water and a 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 his 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 will be gone, like water off a duck’s back. Get on Skylark, Sir Thomas! Now he spreads his wings.�
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