Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

“You lent him!” Oleg reminded briskly.

“I had a second thought!” Thomas roared. He saw a new arrow in Oleg’s hand, squealed in a strained voice, “No! Don’t you dare!..”

He clashed with the last live enemy. Both were heavy, rode mighty horses and fought in the same manner: stopped to take a breath, devoured each other with fierce eyes, lurched of own mighty blows. The crushing, thundering sounds of their duel were heard within a mile around, as if mountains were broken by thunderclaps. The foe brandished his sharp saber much faster than Thomas could do with his long sword, but Thomas’s armor proved its value: the saber would only strike sparks out of it and get indented. Cursing, Thomas slashed with his dreadful sword, seldom cutting anything but the air.

Chachar approached, stopped aside. She held the reins of the snorting Arabian horse. A different horse stood at a small distance, moved its ears nervously as it heard terrible clangs of metal on metal bur did not run away. Oleg dismounted, pulled his throwing knives off, wiped them clean.

Chachar’s face went white. She fidgeted in the saddle, begging Oleg with her eyes to help the valiant Thomas who fought the nasty shaggy villain desperately.

“No,” Oleg replied to her mute pleading. “There’s a great difference in… in our worldviews. A Crusader puts the contest first of result! So he dresses the fight into rites, dances, postures, bowing and throwing a gauntlet, while a Saracen… or the likes of his want only to win. By all means! They are ready to wallow in mud, play a mean trick, hit on the back or below the belt… If civilization prevails, this way will be common. No one will be surprised or intrude if a man down is beaten before their eyes. Thomas has no idea that he’s fighting for culture – but he is. He’d rather die than use ill practice! So I can’t interfere: it will be a great insult to him.”

Chachar watched the dreadful fight tensely, trembling and shivering at the violent blows and clang of steel. “And you? Are you Saracen or European?”

“I’m Rusich,” Oleg replied. “That means I am a bit of European, Saracen, Viking, Scyth, Cimmer, Arian, Nevr and many other nations, forgotten by everyone long ago. A Rusich is a very diverse man…”

They heard a terrible crash of iron torn apart. The enemy reeled in his saddle, a broken fragment of saber in one hand, a shield strap clenched in another. Thomas slashed crosswise. The sliced body sank, flooding the saddle with blood. Head and arm with a bit of shoulder fell down on one side, some more pieces of body – on another. The horse snorted, shifted from leg to leg but stayed in place.

Thomas turned to Oleg and Chachar, raised the visor with his blooded hand, still holding the reddened sword. His eyes searched their faces suspiciously for any hints of mockery or irony.

“Why did you take that risk?” Chachar exclaimed indignantly. “He could kill you!”

“That’s war,” Thomas replied with pride.

“But the pilgrim got rid of three at no risk at all!”

Thomas eyed Oleg from head to foot with displeasure. “He has no knightly ardor in him. No rapture of fray!”

“I have none of it,” Oleg agreed.

They gathered weapons, cleaned them, and loaded on the remounts: four added to their number. When Thomas dismounted to dig the graves, Oleg kept him. “Do you know whom to bury, whom to burn, whom to leave as they are? This mad land has all the faiths and religions mixed up.”

Thomas scratched his wet forehead in a predicament. Chachar led a horse up to him. “Please mount,” she offered gently. “They’ll be found before vultures pilfer them.”

“Found by whom?”

“Their kin,” Oleg replied instead of Chachar, with heavy sarcasm in his voice. Honest Thomas wanted to wonder what kin the hirelings could have in this land, but then he saw their faces, scolded himself silently and mounted.

The wonderer kept frowning as he watched the hoof prints. In times, his fingers touched the thread of wooden figures on a long lace. The steppe turned a hilly plain: the open space of low grass was replaced by thick shady groves, dense thorny shrubs, deep gullies. Twice they crossed wide streams. The animals fled from their way in fear: hares, a herd of wild boars, a lone kulan.

Oleg turned his horse often, dodged in loops, dismounted and palmed the ground. At last, Thomas asked with annoyance, “What’s the matter? Gorvel’s escaping! It’s time to get upon him while he thinks us stopped by his fence!”

Oleg dusted his palms off, shook his head anxiously. “We’re not the only hunters in the forest.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone is following by stealth.”

“Following Gorvel? Maybe they know he stole family jewels!”

“Following Gorvel… or us.”

Thomas gasped, his eyes widened. “Who can be that?”

“In Rus’ I’d have told you. But here… too crowded place. Too many adventurers from all around the world.”

They rode about a mile in silence until Thomas saw Oleg alert. The bow appeared in his hands, he shifted the quiver from the saddle hook to his back, so that the feathered ends of arrows were over his shoulder. Looking at the sullen wonderer, Thomas unsheathed his sword, laid it down across his saddle and rode on, ready for any unexpected thing. Chachar kept behind them, scared, feeling a danger with her female intuition. Her small palm clenched the hilt of a big dagger bravely.

Oleg reined up, said in a lifeless voice, “They were in wait. For us.”

Thomas twisted his head round but failed to get was Oleg was talking about. Chachar galloped ahead. Soon she dashed aside abruptly with a shriek. Thomas seized the sword with right hand, tugged the reins with the left one, rushed ahead with a battle cry, trampling shrubs and grass down.

In twenty steps ahead, he saw a big black spot of a recent fire. The grass around was yellow, ruthlessly trampled. On the other side of the fire, three maimed bodies lay in puddles of clotted blood, their limbs bounded tightly to the stakes driven into the ground. In place of eyes, they had bloody hollows where flies buzzed angrily, fought, copulated, laid their eggs hastily. Only one had his eyes but they seemed unnaturally big. Thomas recoiled in terror: the dead man’s eyelids had been cut away deftly, trickles of blood clotted on his untouched cheeks.

He looked back at the wonderer who gave a sullen nod to confirm Thomas’s frightful guess: the eyelids were cut away to make the tortured man unable to close eyes, to force him to see the terrible torments of his comrades. Skin was ripped off their faces, greenish sinews and tight nodules bulged on the raw red flesh. The white of teeth could be seen through the wounds on their cheeks. The three of them had their male parts chopped off and one had those parts in his mouth. Two men had their bellies slashed open and filled with earth and stones, bluish guts lying on the grass nearby.

Suddenly Thomas seemed to hear a moan. He flinched, jumped up, glanced back at Oleg in fear. The wonderer nodded again. “The last is alive. They put out his eyes and teeth, transfixed his ears, cut sinews in his limbs… but spared his life.”

“How can he live?” Thomas whispered in superstitious awe. “How can it… that… stay alive?”

“Man is a great stayer, to his misfortune. Or his good fortune.”

Thomas, still disbelieving, sheathed his sword and seized a misericord from his belt. Averting his eyes in pity and disgust, he stabbed the empty eye socket, scaring away the flies. The body twitched, uttered a scary rattle, as a blooded scrap of a tongue quivered in the mouth.

Thomas was almost weeping, pallid, his hair on its ends. He hastened to stab the rest two with the narrow blade. He didn’t find it in him to drive the misericord into untouched eyes, so he stabbed the temples. Each body gave a shiver before it was free of suffering.