Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

That was when Thomas heard the shouts of fright. He felt the speed and mortal accuracy of the deathly arrows cutting through the air. His guards darted about, hit against each other, tried to escape, but almost each of them got an arrow emerging in him with a light click. Thomas heard the soft swishing, barely audible in the thunder of waves, even the muffled strikes of shafts piercing through the light armor, crushing and splintering bones.

He waited until the arrows stopped swishing overhead, crawled away from the mooring edge, moving like a worm. Dying men writhed around, uttered awful screams, feeling the torments of hell close.

He saw the wonderer emerging from the riverside rocks, rushing, like a furious elk, to the moorings. Thomas shouted a warning. “More of them!”

Running, the wonderer drew out his huge sword. At the same moment, some dark squatting shadows started to leap onto the logs from the water. The first three advanced their curved swords, the rest were climbing on the moorings behind them.

The wonderer came like an avalanche, with a broad sway of sword. The Hazars, taken aback, had time neither to dodge nor to defend: the menacing blade reached some in chest, other in throat. Cut-away hands fell down on the damp logs, with sabers still clenched in fists.

The wonderer made two leaps up to Thomas, swayed his sword. Thomas felt a hit, and his limbs got spread sideways. Stunned, he got up to his fours, shook his head. His body had no time to go numb of tight bounds, so he groped around, feeling Hazar sabers one by one, crawled up to his sword that lay under the dying Gorvel. With a strong jerk, Thomas tore his masking helmet off and recoiled with disgust. Who made the poor man that ugly? “Sir Gorvel, if God is for us, who is against us?”

Gorvel had no more lips: only wrinkled gums with two last teeth in the right end of his lower jaw. His only eye blazed with hate. Gorvel tried to say something but only gave a rattle, dark blood gushed out of his throat. He coughed, splashing the blood around, tossed his head back, his eye died out.

“May you get lazy devils,” Thomas wished. He tugged his sword out from beneath the corpse, roared, forcing his fury, jumped into the battle. “Death to Pagans!”

The wonderer said nothing, his sword whirling like mad over him and around: he seemed surrounded by a wall of glittering steel. Someone threw a sword, it bounced back with a tinkle, all but hit Thomas.

The knight slashed into the fighting. With beastly fury, he brought his first blow down on the Hazar who sprung ahead. The foe advanced his shield deftly overhead, grinned and bent a little, his saber pointed at Thomas’s belly. The sword, as heavy as an anvil, thundered down and smashed everything together: the shield, the Hazar, and the saber. For a moment, the enemy looked a giant turtle, but the sword went on until the blade touched the moorage logs, then the iron turtle broke in halves and the log gave a nasty squirt of foul water.

Thomas raised his sword, jumped aside from the falling body: a broad-breasted Hazar coming down on him, sprinkling blood out of his nose, ears, eyes, throat, even from under his shoulder blades, as though hammered by a giant. The wonderer lowered his sword. For a moment he and Thomas stood face to face, breathing heavily and baring their teeth, like two wolves in the flock of killed sheep, then the wonderer blurted hoarsely, “Follow me! Quick!”

Thomas rushed after his friend. They ran up the steep bank, like two hot horses, dashed across the steep. On the go, Oleg pointed with hand at the entrance to the cave, a black gap in the brightly lit mountain wall. Thomas nodded silently, saving his breath.

They were in half a hundred steps from the gaping hole when the ground went trembling. From behind a rock, an animal, which Thomas at first glance mistook for another rock, dashed in heavy leaps. He was grey, human-shaped but three times as tall as a man, the bottom part of his body the broadest, each leg twice as thick as a human body, a roundish head straight on the shoulders, with no neck, his chest as large as a barn, his long arms, each as thick as an old oak, reached to the ground.

The beastly man bellowed, blocking the entrance. His eyes on the grey face flashed with red fire, his sharp hairy ears pricked up. The beast opened his monstrous jaws, showing his teeth, started to walk on the people: his arms spread wide apart, each finger the size of a billet, with a glittering sickle of a claw.

Thomas backed. With horror, he felt that the animal, despite his clumsy looks, would come up with in two or three lips, crush and make mincemeat. “Our Lady,” he whispered in terror, “save and have mercy… Sir wonderer, that’s our death!”

“It is,” Oleg said hoarsely. He backed, his mad goggled eyes were fixed on the animal coming upon. “I didn’t expect this!”

The beast’s red mouth puffed out the clouds of smoke, sprinkled with yellow saliva. Where a drop of it fell, stones broke with a crash, smokes rose. Thomas looked at his scary sword: it would not do to cut even the monster’s finger. “Our Lady, is it the end? Help, as I bear the cup with the blood of your son…”

He bit his tongue as he recalled the cup’s being in hands of the Secret Seven. The enemies won at the end, got the cup! Why don’t they leave the two of us be? Only Gorvel craved for revenge, and to Seven I’m like a fly to a dog…

The beast leapt, disallowing them to burst to the cave, spreading his huge paws, his iron claws made a grind, his jaws opened wider. His blazing eyes were looking down, straight at Thomas. The knight’s soul froze with terror, shrank into the farthest corner and stay there trembling, shielding its eyes with paws. He felt the burning heat of the beast’s breath. The wonderer stood pale, with a switch of his sword in both hands.

Suddenly they heard a clatter of horseshoes approaching. A shining knight on a snow-white stallion darted out from behind the mountain crest. Both the knight and his horse were radiant, the light growing brighter with every moment. The knight bent down to the mane, a lance advanced menacingly in right hand, a gleaming triangle shield on left elbow, with a sigil strange to Thomas. The knight had his visor lowered, his destrier galloped, the shining lance head looked straight at the monster’s side.

The beast uttered a scary roar, turned to the rider. The monster was as huge, squat, and indestructible like the pyramid of Egypt. The knight and his horse looked tiny. The sun dazzled Thomas, he seemed to catch a glimpse of a young face under the lowered visor. The shine moved swiftly together with the rider, while the beast was surrounded by darkness. Above him, black crows darted in circles, cawing ominously, flapping their wings, and impossibly big bats and flying hounds moved silently in the air.

The beast leaned forward, catching the galloping rider with giant paws. Thomas bit his lip and the wonderer swore loudly: the mysterious knight was dashing as straight as an arrow flies… The beast gave a triumphant roar, but the rider got through a moment before the huge palms came together with stone crash, his lance went with a terrible force into the left side of the chest.

For a moment it seemed to Thomas that the lance would shatter, as it used to happen in jousting: the beast’s chest was a real stone, but the lance broke through the bones, went in almost up to the handle. A fountain of dark, almost black blood spurted out of the wound, hissed, steaming with poison. The beast jerked his head up, uttered such a terrible roar that Thomas dropped to his knees and pressed his palms on his ears.

The mysterious knight should have left his lance to escape the giant paws cutting through the air blindly. The stallion bent his hind legs, backed, wheezed in fear. The knight, however, tugged his lance out with force, while his horse backed, stunned with the roar, so the lance went out with a squelch, blooded and smoking as though just from the hell’s fire.