Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

The dragon got out, put his paws apart, shook himself like a dog. Crayfish and pebbles flew in all directions, along with clouds of sand and water. He had the third pike clenched in teeth. He trotted on the bank merrily, a mischievous glitter in his eyes, even the mails on his snout a bit apart. As he spotted Thomas dragging a pike away by tail, he stopped abruptly. The lower jaw dropped, the fresh-caught pike plopped wetly down on the ground, leapt twice, splashed into the shallow water near the bank, its body bent forcefully once more and darted into the depth.

Thomas dropped his pike, cowered low of the terrible roar. The dragon yelled, making the ground tremble, trees bend, and leaves fall on the ground as though from shaken branches. His eyes got creepy and bloodshot, the huge comb reared from the withers to the tip of his tail.

The wonderer glanced back at the roar. “What’s up him?” Thomas cried to him in fear.

“Where did you put sheatfish?” Oleg cried back.

“He thinks I ate it?”

Oleg stood up, cupped his hand at his forehead. “Where’s it then?”

“I didn’t touch it at all!” Thomas shouted in fury.

Oleg watched him with great doubt. “And where were you dragging that pike?”

Suddenly the dragon rushed forward, in short, fussy jumps. His eyes were fixed on Thomas, jaws started to open, with a glitter of teeth. Thomas stood as though enchanted, watching the horrible beast coming on him, when a desperate scream cut his ears, “To the cleft! The cleft near you! On the left!!!”

Obeying, Thomas jumped to the left, over a fat pike, fell into the cleft, rolled away from the entrance. At once it went dark, the rock trembled of a heavy blow, the awful roar of frantic dragon slashed his ears. The beast tried to shove his snout into the narrow slit, bellowed of disappointment. Thomas clung fast into the corner, out of his strength, gasping for air the stink of dragon’s breath, his head cracking of the terrible roar.

When the dragon fell silent for a moment, drawing in the air for next scream, Thomas jerked his head up, looked around. He was trapped, no other way out. The dragon gave a dreadful roar, tried to put his paw into the cleft. Thomas felt his hair stirring under the helmet, as the monstrous claws scratched the stone floor in just a step. Somehow the dragon managed a turn, his claws all but reached the knight. Thomas flattened himself on the wall, watching with terror the paw scratching stone in two inches from his leg. He glanced back in despair, but that cave was a solid stone hollowed out: no chink for a mouse to get in or out!

When Thomas could not anymore discern whether it was dark of the beast’s body screening the light or the starry night sky, he tried a look out. He barely had time to recoil: the monstrous paw covered the cleft immediately, pebbles crunched on the diamond-hard claws. The horrible animal kept guarding his prey!

He heard steps, then the wonderer’s sleepy, yawning voice. “Is that you, Sir Thomas?.. Sleep if you must. Let dragon cool down. Don’t re-open his sores.”

“Sir wonderer!” Thomas cried nervously. “I give the word of noble knight’s honor: I didn’t touch that sheatfish!”

The dragon growled menacingly on the other side of the cleft. A monstrous paw screened the stars, hit on the crevice with a thunder. Small pebbles rang on the knight’s armor. Thomas recoiled.

He heard the wonderer’s voice, peaceful and comforting. “I believe you, actually… Though the sheatfish did disappear…”

“You think,” Thomas cried in terror, “I ate that rotten sheatfish?”

“Sir Thomas!”

“Well, no rotten, I was carried too far about it… But I am a paladin of Crusade, noble Sir Malton…”

“In the excitement of hunting… er… A noble passion… But I said nothing of you having eaten it. Though both of us, dragon and I, saw you stealing the pike.”

“ Stealing? ”

“Everyone has his weaknesses, sir knight. Everyone is sinful, God forgive them. And the dragon… he will forget if not forgive.”

“Forget?”

“Dragons have memory like a sieve,” Oleg explained. The dragon’s roaring was all the softer, as though he tried to fathom the meaning of human words or the wonderer scratched him behind ears. “In the morning he can’t recall the day before. So he’ll forget you making off with his sheatfish.”

“I didn’t touch it!”

“Er… he, as well as I, saw you dragging away his pike. Probably he has seen even more of it. We Rodians consider it a sin to deceive even a beast, but you Christians have nothing in the way it’s supposed to be…”

He heard the wonderer settling by the distant fire, which crackled with coals in silence. Lately, Thomas recalled the wonderer, though immersed in his deep thoughts, could have seen the sheatfish getting into the river by itself. Oleg had even advised him, Thomas Malton, to save pikes for that ungrateful fool! But now the wonderer could hardly be reached by Thomas’s cries: he slept like a log, while the dragon breathed evenly at hand, as though a heavy tide coasting in: it only filled the cave not with fresh sea breeze but with a heavy smell of rotting meat stuck in dragon’s teeth. Thomas could see not a single star: the beast leaned his side on the cleft, blocking the way out even in his sleep.

Slowly, Thomas slid down the wall on the floor, trying not to ring his armor. The dragon’s snoring was even and mighty. Unwittingly, Thomas lapsed into a short and troubled dream, as he thought it to be.

Thomas woke of the bright sun shooting its fiery arrows straight in his eyes. He heard splashes, roaring, mighty slapping on water from outside his small cave.

Slowly, with apprehension, Thomas came to the entrance. The dragon was fishing excitedly in hundred steps from the cave, and the wonderer, naked to the waist, sat by the dead fire, which was only a black burnt circle in place of coals. He was doing a diligent needlework on the wolfskin jack lying on his laps.

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas called quietly from his cleft, “good morning!”

“Morning,” the wonderer answered vacantly. His eyebrows were knitted on the bridge of his nose. “How have you slept?”

“Thanks,” Thomas replied politely. He moved out a bit, measured the distance towards the excited fisher with his eyes. “How is our horse?”

“Skylark? He seems to be well. Fishing till dawn. They say it’s really the best time for fishing.”

“It is,” Thomas confirmed respectfully. “But what about the sheatfish?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Thomas came out of the cleft. “Sir wonderer,” he spoke with dignity, “in your godly thoughts, you have missed it were you who advised me to help poor animal save his fish! Well, for my kind deed… as my friend pilgrim of Rus’ would say, my lard was spread on my own skin!”

The wonderer lowered his needle, his eyebrows flew up to the middle of his forehead. “Really?.. I have some vague memories of that. It seems you truly haven’t stolen that sheatfish… Indeed, that would be too much even of a Christian. Though sheatfish did vanish… Well, well, let’s leave it. God sees everything, especially your Christian god spying on everyone, jealous of no leaf to fall without his will, not a single hair of one’s head…”

Thomas approached the fire, nodded at the humped back with reared comb. “Won’t he devour me?”

The wonderer thought for a while, scratched the back of his head with five, shrugged. “Off chance he won’t.”

Doomed, Thomas sat down near the wonderer. “Off chance,” “we must go,” “it will come right,” and also “kusim,” a mysterious spell with which the wonderer went right through it and won. Thomas tried to say that magic formula secretly himself, but it had no effect on him, the knight of West: one definitely needed to have a mysterious Russian soul, which is not to be measured against other men’s yardsticks, to say “off chance” and go on with a blind faith in own good luck…