Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

He fell silent, his jaw dropped again. To Thomas, he looked like a corpse who gave his life to thirty or some other number of virgins, as he lost count of them before, and then accepted even those whom the chieftain of Kumans was sending him, Thomas Malton, who had seen no petticoat for several months by that time!

Damned Pagan , Thomas said angrily. I need to discuss the principles of Christianity seriously with him when I have an opportunity. Fool, he does not understand that only Pagans have their soul and body as a whole, as though white and yellow clay mixed up in the same basin. And Christians have soul separate from body: carnal values and spiritual values. Soul cannot respond for carnal joys, as body is sinful and soul is godly! No sin – no repentance, no repentance – no salvation. And if the Pagan understood nothing, as the doctrine of Christ was for selected few, Thomas would tell him resolutely and firmly to leave the judgment of Christian values to him. Just look at this goer-in-everything-himself! Smells like a barrel of wine. Must have drunk for two of us as well, a viper…

Chapter 38

The wonderer was asleep so fast that could hardly be awaken not only by dinner but by supper. Well if he wakes at dawn… Thomas sighed, took the dagger. The plates beneath him were moving, coming close, rubbing against each other creepily. Once their collision made a bony splinter to flew apart and hurt his cheek bleeding. He touched the scratch, asked Our Lady in a whisper to leave that small scar be. Later, back in Britain, he would swear on the Holy Book, the Nail of the Cross of the Lord and anything else they would offer him that he got that wound from a dragon as large as a mountain!

Obeying the prick, dragon turned northwest, and Thomas stiffened of waiting again. Gradually, he accustomed himself to glance down. Though his soul would froze with bodily fear each time, he could watch the migrating masses of mounted hosts, countless herds. Sometimes he spotted white tents: Polovtsians build no cities, as the wonderer had told him, only ruin and destroy the cities of others, live in yurts and covered wagons. They cross streams on the go and wade across large rivers. Only once Thomas saw them swimming across a broad river: the water was scattered with the points of swimmers, with many rafts of logs and clusters of empty leather skins tied together among them.

Far below the dragon’s belly, rives and groves floated by. As close Thomas peered, he could see not a single city, either big or small, no village, no hamlet, not even a tiny settlement of one or two houses: only hooded carts of nomads surrounded by numerous herds of cattle and horses.

At noon Thomas woke the wonderer up gloatingly, as he had asked for it. Almost at the same time, the dragon had a wish to eat, and the half-awake wonderer together with the knight flung fat slices of meat hastily into the red furnace. The dragon kept chewing. Finally, he turned away, but then decided to fill up the cheek pouch on the other side. Thomas pretended not to notice it, the wonderer threw bleeding slices up alone, then wiped his hands for a long time on the lifted comb that looked like a tall bony fence of sharp stakes.

By evening Oleg made the dragon descend. They landed on the bank of a narrow river that ran jumping on stones, its bed cut in the crumbling rocks, so unusual in the steppes, as flat as an endless table.

That time Thomas jumped off a moment before the huge wings folded with a thundering sound on the back, pressing down the bristled comb. He rolled over head, his iron clanging, all but ran into own sword. The wonderer followed the dragon who lay down on the bank and lapped the water greedily. Oleg shook out meat from two sacks near the awful snout.

Thomas limped into shrubs to gather brushwood, as the sun was sinking to the horizon. When he came back with a first armful, a tiny fire already burnt on the bank: the wonderer lit it on dry grass blades and wooden splinters washed ashore by waves. In hundred steps upstream, there were loud splashes, hits on water, as though the river was battered with logs. The dragon, after having gobbled half of the meat and thrown the rest around swinishly, sat up to his belly in the water, almost blocking the river, his outspread wings bent by the current. The seething water ran over wings and paws, with spikes looking out of the foam, like sharp pales in the city wall. The dragon bowed down to the very water, peered very closely in, holding his breath, then suddenly stroke with both paws, raising a cloud of spray. Thomas dropped dry twigs with a crash, glancing apprehensively at the strange animal. “What’s he doing?”

“Fishing,” Oleg muttered.

“Are you jesting?.. Fish to him is small like flies to you.”

“Or you,” Oleg parried. “Do you only hunt for food? Or for the joy of it too?.. Dragon has a pleasure to recall his childhood. When he was small, he lived in water… Fish was a match to him then. A match or bigger.”

The dragon jumped with squeaks. His fat bottom twitched, prominent frog eyes flashed. His forepaws were groping under the water, his claws so wide apart and out at full length that it all but made Thomas’s legs give way, and own armor seemed to the knight no thicker than maple leaves. “Probably,” Oleg said, thinking of some other matters, “he is small still… Dragons live for thousands of years. The one two hundred years old is a teenager…”

The teenager, with a terrible scream that made the banks tremble, was pulling out of the water some fluttering log with fins, Oleg hardly recognized a sheatfish in it. Backing, the dragon stepped on his own tail and fell but kept the sheatfish, floundered with it in the water for a while, raising clouds of spray and shaking the ground, flung it hastily far away on the bank and rushed to the river again. He bustled about, with a passion of hunting, plunged his head into the water up to the ears, peering at the rocky bottom, and when a strong wave rolled overhead he did not recoiled in fear but plunged deeper in excitement: only his spread comb and fat bottom remained over the water.

Twice he threw on the bank a hundred-year-old pike, which looked like a green mossy drowned log, while the miraculous sheatfish, a giant Oleg had never seen before, was writhing heavily, bending, sliding gradually down the slope to the water. The dragon jumped fussily, spanked with giant paws, trying to claw the prey, snatched it with jaws. Meanwhile, the sheatfish, feeling the water close, bent his body twice with its last strength and its tail, forked like a mermaid’s, touched the water. The sheatfish leapt in the air, plopped down into the shallow water, and crawled on, winding his body and leaving a deep trench, which was buried with sand immediately. The sheatfish was getting deeper with every moment. Finally, the wave was cut by a dorsal fin, which looked like a small dragon’s comb. It darted to the middle of the river and vanished.

“Fool,” Oleg grumbled. He fingered his charms, casting vacant glances at the dragon’s comb spread with excitement. “His pikes are also creeping to water… What an offended roar he will make!”

“May I keep the pikes?” Thomas said anxiously, but Oleg heard sympathy in the knight’s voice too. “We’ll need less meat for him.”

“Keep them,” Oleg growled. His eyes were vacant, he kept fingering charms, his lips moved, whispering either prayers or spells.

Thomas rushed to the fishing spot, not afraid of the wet dragon: no savage beast anymore but a fervent fisher whom the knight could understand as he was one himself. With effort, he dragged the heavy pikes far from the water. Wet and covered with slime, they writhed fervently, snapped with toothy jaws. Thomas had a hard time helping the luckless fisher: the pikes turned out to be tenacious of life, though both had marks of claws on their heads. When he tried to grab the first one by tail (it was dangerous to seize by gills a creature with crocodile jaws and inch-long teeth), the pike’s mighty jerk threw him down on the ground, with an iron thunder, the wet sand mixed with fish slime hurled into his eyes. Swearing like a Templar, he stunned both with his iron fists, finishing the dragon’s work, dragged them on the dry as far as he could.