Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

Eagles to this dragon , Thomas thought uneasily, are flies to a swallow . With his weight and colossal wings, he should ascend in several flaps and then soar for half a day with his wings spread out! “Will we fly where we need?” he asked in a shaky voice. “Or where the dragon likes to?”

Oleg shrugged. He was inspecting closely the gaps between bony slabs on dragon’s neck and withers. The wind ruffled the wonderer’s hair but his green eyes looked intently and seriously. “Once men raced on dragons. And combated! Until new gods came…”

Suddenly he gave a terrible scream. His face turned white as chalk, he fell on his back, twitching in convulsion, shaking, his eyes went mad. With a shout, he jumped off the dragon but ropes kept him on. The wonderer wheezed, his teeth bared in a beastly way. He started to untie hastily.

Thomas seized him by hand. “Sir wonderer! Sir wonderer!” Oleg flung him aside, growling. He had undone two knots, only the last one remained. Thomas gripped his friend with both hands, pressed to his own breast. “Sir wonderer!” he shouted in despair. “What happened? What’s the matter with you?”

With no word, the wonderer struggled away, growled, his lips foaming, his eyes mad. He tried to jump down again but the knot kept him, then he started to pull the ends, snarling. Thomas, seeing the death to both, seized him across his body, brought down, pressed on the bony plates, shouting in his face, “Sir wonderer! What’s on you? Tell me what to do!”

There was a brief glimpse of human mind in his mad eyes, a quiver of lips. Thomas heard his whisper. “The Seven…” Then Oleg growled again, wriggled, pushed Thomas aside with force that all but dislocated his shoulder. Thomas recoiled, the wonderer’s fingers dug into the last knot. Clenching his teeth, Thomas pulled out his sword, brandished overhead, brought the flat side down on the back of the wonderer’s head. Oleg collapsed silently, face first, into the slit in bony plates. Thomas tied his friend up quickly, hands behind, lest Oleg reach them with teeth, tied his feet tightly to the comb and protruding spikes on the dragon’s back.

The wonderer came back to himself, started to flutter. Thomas moved away with a sigh of relief. The dragon flapped twice, Thomas collapsed prone, but the leathery sails stretched out at once, crashing and rustling, and the world got still again. Thomas felt his stomach in his throat, his feet icy with terror. He glanced back timidly at the wonderer: Oleg roared and twitched in his bounds. The comb cracked menacingly, threating to rub the rope through. Thomas reached the wonderer, tied him with one more belt along his back, lest he take a firmer stand. He has monstrous strength. It will do to tear any rope. And those possessed are given strength by Devil himself!

Suddenly he felt the sun on his right cheek, though it had been on his left one before. The dragon seemed to have turned. Why not? He’s not longing for Krizhina, just soaring in search of a herd of fat cows to come down on them with a roar, to gobble those he snatches, to burn down the shepherd if that muddler fails to run away. “Sir wonderer,’ Thomas called in a shaky voice. “Oleg! Dear friend!”

The wonderer dropped saliva, his body contorted and writhing. He gnashed his teeth creepily, beat himself against the dragon back. Thomas clenched his teeth, trying not to look down: under the dragon’s belly, as white as a frog’s, there was a terrific abyss and the flat steppes floated in two or three miles below!

He drew his sword out, put it clumsily into the slit between plates, held his breath. The dragon made a full circle, with no move of wings, just rocking slightly in the warm rising flows of air. Thomas pressed cautiously on the hilt, ready to pull it out and recoil at every moment. Dragon kept soaring in the same idle way, in the warm summer air clean of dust and annoying flies, even the clouds under his belly as white as it was.

The sword got stuck, whether in gristles or small bones, so Thomas struggled to take it a scale closer to the neck, to the place where the wonderer had stabbed with his dagger. He had to redo the ropes. In times, the dragon started to flap wings, all of a sudden, jumped swiftly up into the sky, the cold wind made Thomas’s fingers numb and eyes water.

When he put the sword blade into the narrow slit between bony blocks, shabby, with broken edges, the dragon turned his head suddenly to give Thomas a close look. The knight’s hands got cold, fingers unclenched. Fortunately, he had the sword hilt tied to his hand, otherwise he’d have lost it. The dragon’s eyes were slowly becoming bloodshot, his breath puffed out of nostrils more often. In terror, Thomas realized the flying dragon could reach own back, as well as the tip of tail, with those awful jaws. No place to hide!

The dragon looked back again. With open jaws, he reached for Thomas, his neck bent creepily, bony scales screeching. Thomas backed in panics, the ropes stretched, keeping him in place. He felt a puff of stinky heat, as though fat carcasses were burnt in a huge stove.

He touched his sword helplessly, his fingers found some hairy thing. He pulled it, tore the rope off, flung the bundle into the mouth that had covered half the sky. The skin, with slices of meat rolled inside, plopped straight on the dragon’s tongue. The beast shut his jaws, moved them heavily to the right, then to the left, stretched reluctantly into a likeness of flying duck, soaring lazily, spreading his enormous wings that would do to cover any peasant’s field.

Thomas sobbed. His fingers trembled, heart pounded like a sheep tail. He sat like a mite on the back of most huge dragon… if even he swears it, no one would believe!.. flying over the clouds, his possessed friend rattling and wriggling in ties behind… What’s next? If the dragon wanted to gobble him, he would throw meat instead: that is what the wonderer prepared it for, but how long would that suffice? What if the dragon won’t land?

Thomas shrugged with a shiver: the constant head wind was really cool. Should I make the dragon land?

Trembling all over, with a dagger in hand, he peered into the slits between bony plates. In the middle of the back they were colossal: the dagger was too short to reach the vulnerable place with its point. He redid the knots, feeling like a nanny-goat on a tie, crawled on his fours to the neck, clinging at bony protuberances and holding his dagger in no knightly way at all – clenched in his teeth. Fortunately, no noble sir here to see me in such a humiliating pose. Though I’m on a dragon, not on a cow!

The dragon’s back went down abruptly, all of a sudden. Thomas clutched at the edge of the slab in panics. His body lost weight, all around the dragon went milky white at once, then the whiteness remained above: they were falling down like rocks. His heart stopped, being wrung as if it belonged to the most fearful hare frightened even by frogs.

Thomas clutched with all his might, feeling torn away from the solid surface, though that surface was also falling, falling, falling… A sudden resonant flap, and his chin hit against the surface that suddenly jumped up to meet him, with such a force that his fingers clanged like swords in battle. His mouth felt hot and salty, his head filled with lid, as well as his whole body. He was heavy, sprawled like a squashed frog, even his thoughts could barely stir, heavy and desperate. What all these torments for?

The wings flapped mightily for a long time. The dragon ascended in jerks. Thomas was now released, now pressed with force on the solid, his bones crushed, his body filled with heavy blood. The dragon must have been descending to the very ground, fascinated by some cow but scared away by either shepherd or errant knights. And now he must have decided to crush riders flat against the firmament!