Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

But there is a more difficult sort of reclusion: being among people, dressing, eating, and doing as they do, but living this life with your flesh only, while your soul remains as clean and sublime as it was on the mountain peak. Many tried Great Reclusion, but few succeeded in it!

The road meandered in hills. Twice Oleg saw odd ugly olives with swollen trunks, which only grew in that land, until the hills parted and the road went out into the open.

Far ahead, there was a lofty fortified castle – a gloomy building of four floors, with a tall watchtower. At that moment the castle was ramparted. It looked swarmed with ants, but those were lots of men: dragging huge stones, tying them round to lift onto the wall. Oleg saw their bare backs bustling everywhere and the wet glister of trunks that were barked on the go.

The road forked: one branch turned to the castle eagerly while another went by. The wonderer passed by the castle without interest: he had seen lots of its sort. Since the Saracen were defeated and Jerusalem with her lands captured, the Frank crusaders fortified hastily, enclosing with walls. Kings vied with each other in bestowing the lands they did not control on their knights, and each knight rushed to build a castle to shelter behind its solid walls.

The castle keep is a tall square tower: wide and massive, formed by huge granite blocks. It is surrounded by smaller buildings, their roofs barely visible over the high rampart. The castle stands in the bend of a river – a common way to ensure better protection. On the other side, there is a deep moat dug from the river and filled with its water. The massive gate is deep in the wall, under the arched cornice, flanked with two small towers where guards would hide.

The wonderer had left the castle far on the left and behind when he heard a fast clatter of hooves approach from there. Without looking back, he stepped off the road and past the roadside. He knew the wicked men’s habit to whip pedestrians while riding.

Hooves clattered past him. He saw three men on light slim-legged horses. The last rider looked back at him, shouted and stopped. Others reined up reluctantly. The three of them are dressed in motley rags but all have sabers and daggers. One also has a bow on his back and a quiver full of feathered arrows by his saddle. Their faces are hungry and evil.

“Hey you,” the back rider cried harshly. “Whose man?”

“A pilgrim, good people,” Oleg replied meekly. “On my way home from the Holy Land.”

“Where’s your home?” the rider demanded. His friends held their horses who were longing for gallop.

“Rus’.”

The riders exchanged glances. “Never heard of it,” the back one said angrily. “Some made-up place, huh?”

“Or a tiny kingdom!” a different rider cried.

“Tiny as my nail!”

“Very good,” the back rider resolved. “He’s no one’s man.” He dismounted, prodded Oleg’s chest with a whip handle. Oleg did not stir when the man felt the muscle on his arms and chest efficiently. Then he made Oleg open his mouth and counted his teeth.

The first rider cried impatiently, “You’re ready to grab all sorts of carrion, Ternak! Look! He’s a bag of bones.”

“He’s from Europe,” the second rider added. “Our blood.”

Ternak laughed. “God said He knew no Gentile or Jew. So everyone is equal to Baron’s stone quarry, ha ha! Take him to Murad.”

They surrounded the pilgrim: two with bare sabers, the third with an arrow on the bow string. Oleg looked in their faces of skillful slavers, experts in this gods-awful trade.

“Stretch your hands!” Ternak commanded. “Not ahead! Behind you!”

Oleg crossed his arms behind him submissively. Ternak put a rope on them deftly, tied his hands together. Another rider helped him to lift Oleg on the horseback. Ternak shook his hands off. “So heavy a bag of bones!” he said with surprise. “Abdullah! Take him to Murad and join us.”

Abdullah swore, mounted hastily and galloped to the castle, whooping and holding the bound pilgrim.

They had barely entered the courtyard when a huge creature covered with black hair came out to meet them. He seemed to Oleg half a man, half a beast, with his low forehead, close small eyes, huge massive jaw and absent neck: his boulder-like head was seated on muscular shoulders directly. His bare chest resembled a beer cask, his legs looked as though he spent his whole life seated on that cask, but his arms were as big and thick as tree trunks but covered with thick black hair instead of bark.

The enormous man wiped his hooked fingers, which looked fire-tempered, on a hem of his blood-stained leather apron. He looked the wonderer over with revulsion. “That one a croak on his first day! Kadji damn you, Ternak…”

Oleg was brought to a low stone barn. The door was ajar, the inside smelled of sewage and stiff air. They pushed Oleg forcefully into the dark. His foot found no floor, he went rolling down the stairs and came back to himself on the stone floor covered with wisps of rotten straw.

He heard the door shut and barred upwards. A strong hand touched his shoulder, a mocking voice said into his ear, “Hail to the builder of new world!”

Oleg’s eyes got accustomed to the semi-dark quickly. He discerned about twenty half-naked men along the walls. Each one had a tarnished metal collar round his neck, three were fettered. “Which world?” Oleg asked.

“The new one,” the other man mocked. “Fair one! Christian one! Baron Otset’s castle among barbarity. An outpost of Christian host in the land of Saracen…” He was half-naked, his back in awful swollen wales. His face was crossed by a lacerated crimson wale, his left eye swollen.

Oleg sat up, rubbed his numb hands. “I heard of… a stone quarry?”

The man grinned, baring sharp stubs of front teeth. His gums were bleeding. “Ever worked stone?”

Oleg nodded, still looking around. If the man wants to see the novice frightened, he’ll be disappointed. Pilgrims see many things in their travels.

“A pilgrim?”

Oleg nodded at that again. The stranger went on, “Half pilgrims here. Baron gives us a chance to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. For him, surely. The castle’s done, now the wall raised… My name’s Yarlat.”

“I’m Oleg. From Rus’.”

“It is somewhere in Hyperborea 5?”

In the next morning Oleg was brought to the forge. Two strong warriors put an iron ring around his neck. The forger was skillful and fast to join the metal ends and rivet them together. The skin on Oleg’s throat got burnt a bit.

The guard made a strong slap on his back. “I love pilgrims! Humble, accepting. Other pigheaded. Yesterday two of ‘em fed to dogs alive.”

The collar was burning hot, slow to cool. The guards led Oleg through the main gate outside. In half a mile from the castle, there was a pit large enough to contain two or three such castles. Fine sharp dust was rising from it. Oleg heard heavy blows of iron on stone.

The guard led Oleg up to the brink, pointed at a wooden ladder. “Get down! No pick for you, drag stone out. The foreman show you in.”

Down in the pit, half-naked men were pounding rocks with heavy picks, making holes in the stone, driving wooden stakes into the holes and watering. The wet swollen wood would break stone. The broken boulders were tied round with ropes and lifted up.

The foreman frowned at his new slave. “You drag broken stone. To that wall. On top only those won’t try to escape. We don’t know if you will.”

Silently, Oleg gripped a sparkling colored edge of the cut-off boulder. The black-bearded man who took it by another side told him through gritted teeth, “Don’t be idle, but don’t work fingers to bone. Or you won’t live till evening!”