by Yury Nikitin
***
The dragon dashed over the clouds, like a stone shot from 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 lower his head down often and look below with a quiver. In the grey-green abyss there were numberless mounted hosts moving and the 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. “Their last attack on Rus’.”
“The last wife of a priest, as my friend wonderer says…”
“It’s really the last. They got between the hammer and the anvil. Propped up by Polovtsians – new enemies to Rus’.”
“How will it be?”
“As it always was. Many of them came, and more to come. By chance it will come right…”
Thomas glanced at the wonderer’s gaunt face with ardent sympathy. He undertook 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 began to flap 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 fear in Thomas’s soul turned to an icy block of despair, terror, and doom. The Secret Seven must be enraged. Put all their business aside to search for them. They lost trace when the two friends went underground, then found the wonderer for a moment, but the dragon was flying fast and they lost him again… But they would find and revenge the death of Baruk, the adept of black magic who sold his soul to the 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 the old gods, some of whom, perhaps, 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 ascent 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 the wind grew thinner. As Oleg moved the dagger hilt, the dragon turned obediently, as a spurred horse does. 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, with 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 his 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 in place, 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. A hundred steps above the rocky surface he even made a sluggish flap of his membranous sails to soften his fall. His outstretched paws hit against the hard ground resiliently. He went running, moving his 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. Two versts away, a small river flowed into Dnieper. Oleg nodded at it. “Pochayna25,” 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 their 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 openings of the caves.
“He’s settled,” Thomas sighed with relief. “I was afraid he’d rush to 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 up 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 the eye of a 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 the roofs of his native city. Above all, no dragon will fly farther north, which is for the better in the end. Who of the 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 the cold comes, he will follow wild geese into his native warm lands.
Thomas touched the bag with the Holy Grail – it had become a habitual gesture of his as fingering charms was to the wonderer – and followed his friend. The huge sword in its well-fitted scabbard seemed rooted on 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 his armor, came up to his friend and walked shoulder to shoulder with him.
