Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

The village blacksmith examined the hooves of their horses and reshod one remount. By the way, he gave a solemn warning, “You’d better turn until it’s too late. The way to the right is across mountains, to the left – across deserts. For any of them, you’ll have to leave horses. But if you barge straight forward, it’s sure death! The land of invisible warriors there. Evil and merciless, them allow no strangers at all. Destroy and sacrifice any foreigner.”

The knight glanced askew at the bluish mountain peaks far to his right, shivered. “I’ve crossed mountains once. I still wake up shouting when I dream of it!”

“You’ve also crossed deserts,” Oleg added in a droopy voice. “The hosts of Baldin the Third perished there: not of foe’s sabers but of heat and thirst… What’s special about those warriors?”

“Them invincible. Practice martial arts for lifetime. Know many secrets. Should such a warrior fight ten enemies at once, he leaves ten corpses in the field and goes without a scratch!”

Oleg saw undisguised fear in the knight’s blue eyes. “That is beyond even Sir Lancelot of the Lake… And Sir Galahad too, and Sir Gawain even less so… My God! Why do they need that martial skill? Are they at war?”

The smith shrugged. His eyes were sympathetic. “Them took no side in Crusade. Them would only fight each other, the strongest ones survive. Their monastery high in the mountains… For thousands of years, its monks invented special ways of fight.”

“ Monks? ” Thomas said indignantly. “Shouldn’t they compete in holiness?”

The smith cast a sharp glance, mocking and sympathetic at once, at the knight. “Our faith is young, theirs old. Them have own rites. Them do no plowing, no reaping, no sowing – only jump and scream with arms. From dawn till dark.”

Thomas shuddered. “This is the way to train a hare to defeat a wolf. Every day from dawn till dark, year after year… Brrr!.. And the desert… how broad is it?”

“Just a week journey. On fast camels.”

Thomas glanced slantwise at their exhausted horses. “Which way would we take, sir wonderer?” he asked hopefully. “What do your gods tell you?”

“And yours?”

“Mine… high and inspired they are! They set the world going. And yours are simpler. They have better knowledge of mundane life.”

“Our gods teach us to take straight roads. I don’t think Christ would object to it either. Let’s strengthen our souls and ride straight!”

Thomas’s face darkened, he fell silent for a long time. Finally, he put his palm down on the bag where a side of the cup was shown through. “You are right, sir,” he told Oleg with a heavy sigh. “We should pick straight ways, and the Holy Virgin will not leave us till our death hour!”

They spent a night at the hospitable smith’s place, rode out on the road at dawn. Thomas frowned, checked the easiness of drawing the sword out more frequently than he did usually, flinched at every rustle. Oleg hung the quiver with arrows on his back, though in the hot air it started to sore straight away, nasty trickles of sweat ran down to his waist. He kept the bow string on. Thomas needed no words to understand that the wonderer was anxious and alerted. “We’ll cope,” Thomas said in a loud but shaky voice. “The Holy Virgin never leaves her faithful knights!”

The wonderer hemmed. “I wanted to ask you this question long ago…” he said loudly. “Why do you swear on the Virgin? I thought your main gods are Christ and his Father whose name I forgot, and the Holy Spirit whose name I can’t recall either – followed by Nicholas, Michael, Gabriel, George… And the Holy Virgin – what sort of patron can she make? A young woman with a babe in arms!”

Thomas shot a fiery glance at him, snuffled. “Men can defend themselves, and Virgin Mary has a need of defenders! That’s why we, noble knights, are the warriors of hers!”

“Er… Is it you protecting her?”

Thomas winced. Usually, he would avoid discussing divine matters with that Pagan, but now, being put in a spot, he decided to counterattack. “And why do your Slavs who turned into the faith of Christ swear on some Saint Nicholas? He’s no main god either! Your Slavic princes, I’ve seen many of them in the Crusade, had Saint Nicholas, not Christ on their banners! And I’ve heard Slavic warriors talking that when the God of Christians dies their Saint Nicholas will take his throne! What did they mean?”

Oleg shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m the sorcerer of Old Faith.”

“A Pagan!”

“An Old Believer,” Oleg corrected. “A Rodian!”

“The new always wins! No way to stop it.”

“The old is replaced by new, according to Rod’s decree, every six hundred years. Six centuries after Rod was born, the White God came into this world, followed, after six more centuries, by Targitai, then by Zarathustra, then by Gautama also known as Buddha, just in case you didn’t know… Six centuries after Buddha, your Christ was born. But he’s not the last one! Six centuries after him, a new prophet came into the world.” 12

Thomas recoiled, spat with disgust. “He’s no prophet to me.”

“Why?”

“Everything was said by Jesus. Nothing to be added.”

“Really? I kindly advise you to read Koran before you argue on it. If the new is always the better, then you should adopt the faith of Mahomet without reading Koran at all. And if it isn’t, then you shouldn’t attack Old Believers. Even less so, as you are Angle! I’ve spotted that Saxes and Angles revere their ancestors and traditions. You have so much love for antiquity that after you’ve destroyed the ancient Britons, you keep calling the captured land Britain!”

“Not all of us,” Thomas replied with displeasure. “Some fools try to call it Saxony… Though this way it gets confused with the old Saxony where we once came from. Also, it is called Anglo-Saxony…”

“Maybe you should call it just Anglia?”

“It would be unfair,” Thomas objected but smiled contentedly. “Saxons had landed on this new island too, and their number was not smaller than ours.”

“What did you see to be fair?” Oleg wondered. “Scythians perished a thousand years ago but we are still called Scythes! And our Slavic lands are named Great Scythia!”

The next day, their road came to the bank of a broad river. They saw some boats, both fisher and merchant ones, far away but the crowd on the wide log mooring was waiting for a ferry, which, enormous and slow, was crawling along the cable from the other bank.

Thomas looked across the river with glassy eyes. Far away there, almost at the horizon, the yellow walls of a strange fortress could be seen, well-lit by the morning sun. Oleg nudged a small hook-nosed man who looked like a gaunt mournful bird. “Whose castle is it?”

The man gave him a strange look, moved away carefully. His neighbor, swarthy and hook-nosed the same, cast an apprehensive glance around. “I see you are Frank,” he said in a warning tone. “Mind you not say that in presence of monks. It’s no castle but holy monastery! A cloister to warrior monks.”

“A cloister? Do they come out of it?”

“Their duty is to wander by roads and preach good. And since most roads are dangerous, monks are taught to fight so that any of them can defeat ten villains armed to their teeth! With his bare hands, surely.”

“And if… not bare?”

The hook-nosed man shook his head. “Armed?.. Well, only gods may withstand then! Or they may not…”

The ferry crept up to the mooring, pushed against it with iron-bound logs: the travelers felt a quiver beneath their feet. Two ferryman jumped on the mooring, tied sturdy ropes, threw a wide wooden gangplank across. The crowd began to flow onto the ferry.