Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

“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 spread the dirt over. “Surrounded by 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 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 his feet, dragged together some dry twigs, which he found close 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 got on 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 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 Anglic way since he was a child. Before the water boiled, he came back carrying five big fish and two score of 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 over and his mortal agony, in some imperceptible way, started to turn into gentle sorrow.

Once he cleaned the small fish, he threw them into boiling water. He slashed a sweet juice-dripping stripe out of the big fat river animal, sliced it, sprinkled with the strange grey salt of Agathyrsians and, while the fish soup was cooked, he chewed that raw juicy meat. He chewed, screwing up with joy, his mouth squelching and champing, heavy drops of limpid juice hanging in the corners of it.

The water in the kettle went 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 content, feeling his grief not that gnawing anymore. It will come right at the end, as the wonderer puts it. Off 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 always, lest the anguish come back to claw his soul. It will come right, it will all come right at the end. May 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? Off 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 of the knight’s strange skill: if no poor devil’s misfortune to be born a knight, he could have luck to make a good cook. Oleg supped all of the stew, sucked big bones around, 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 in 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 in hundred steps, 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 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 bow string, 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 on, 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 youth, 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.