Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

“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.