Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

“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 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 man’s arms and will strong, hurled on the laid skin. Oleg cut the meat off hastily, rolled into the skins, which were still bleeding, dragged into a deep cleft. Thomas did not rack his brain over the wonderer’s plans: he gave all of himself to the amusement of knight, as though back to 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 a look into that hole, he risked to have 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-off skins, darted away. Thomas spat angrily and had his meal in proud solitude. That time the wonderer did not turn up 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 got half below the skyline. The wonderer messed about the fading fire: blew the coals up, tossed 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 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 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 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 a distinct crunch of Oleg’s stiffened joints.

“Get up, brave knight! I see the great future of 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 started to wait, gripping the sword hilt with both hands.

Climbing, the wonderer 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 got his legs trembling: it was a dragon ! Sir Gawain, according to singers, 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 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 a screech of 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 frog’s or 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 got refracted in the prominent eyes covered with a transparent film of skin. The dragon gave a roar again, started backing and hunching. His flabby neck, in faded, shabby bony mails, got wrinkled with thick folds.

Chapter 36

Trembling all over, Thomas said loudly a prayer to Holy Virgin, the defender and patroness of bold warriors, entreating her to drive the dragon back into the hole: that beast was too huge even for Lancelot together with all the Knights of the Round Table to cope… Suddenly he stopped praying, swore angrily, with bad words of all the saints, their mothers, children, and relatives: the wonderer had climbed on the stone ledge, picked up the crumpled skin, and rushed to the beast!

Thomas bellowed, calling the foolish Pagan not to get into the mouth of his beastly god. The human sacrifice was cancelled by Christ who became the last sacrifice himself, so don’t be foolish, stop, wait… If I had a good horse and long lance , he thought angrily, I could gallop on the dragon. Whether kill him or not, but die with honor. Now I can only fall dead along with the Pagan…

The dragon opened his mouth, which looked like a cellar, uttered a demanding roar. Oleg on his run flung the skin into it. The dragon’s jaws slammed with an earth-shaking thud, started to move, grinding the meat along with the skin, like giant millstones.

Thomas climbed on the ledge near Oleg who breathed heavily. The wonderer turned, happy to see the knight. “Sir Thomas? Most welcome! Why no meat with you? Please bring it, as much as you can.”

Thomas was out of breath, his eyes blazed with the courage of martyr. “Sir wonderer…” he babbled, panting, “strange games… you play…”

“ Play? ” Oleg got confused. “If you see fun in it, I’d change with you, Sir Thomas! I have stacks of work overhead. No time for games.”

“And… er… dragon?”

“Dragon?” Oleg got confused again. “Ah, serpent? That is the horse I told you of. Or I forgot to tell?”

Thomas lowered his hefty sword, feeling a bit ridiculous. “The… horse? No need… to fight?”

“No more than with your warhorse, Sir Thomas. Only while teaching it with bridle… While we feed him, he won’t devour us. But if he gets hungry…”

“I see!” Thomas cried. He did not dare to drop his heavy sword, only sheathed it, rushed down the slope as fast as he could. Wild ideas collided in his mind, strange faces darted by. Thomas forced himself to think of nothing, lest he go mad like some men in that long exhausting journey from northern lands to Jerusalem. All sorts of things happened to those who got into that strange new world with no winter, where people had faces as black as tar – at first crusaders mistook them for devils from hell – and everything went another way…