Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

Oleg prepared to hurl the stone. He knew he would not miss, but a strange weakness fettered his muscle. A young man is to die… what for? Is it his fault that he’s in the way of a runaway slave? Perhaps he’s an outlaw, the worst kind of man, but he might just as well only happen to be here and soon leave it for a good honest job…

Oleg ran to him noiselessly, tips of his toes barely touched the stone. He punched the helmet, it crunched, the boy went slipping down the wall. Oleg caught him, put down into the corner. The dark blood gushed from under the helmet, spilt hot on his hands. Oleg clenched his teeth. He did not expect this, out of the habit to use violence in his cave. The lad will never come to… I could have thrown the stone, all the same!

Feeling guilty, he took the sword belt off the body, unsheathed the knife and tucked into his belt backwards, in Scythian way. A cloud hid the moon for a moment. He sneaked along briskly, getting used again to the weight of sword on his left.

The yard remained empty, its broad ill-fitted paves and dented stone stairs flooded with moonlight. The walls were formed by solid stone slabs while broken pieces were used to cobble the courtyard. The place was all stone, from top to bottom: the keep, walls, towers, slave cellars, even the yard…

Slave cellars? Thomas must be in another kind of cellar: a torture chamber. Baron must have one. All big lords have those: open and secret, separate for common people and nobles… But where is it?

He stopped dead, his eyes examined the dark stone buildings. Baron built in a hurry to fortify in the unfriendly land, men in his stone quarry dropped like flies, but everything is durable, made for ages… and following a familiar pattern. According to that canon, the torture chamber was placed straight under the keep, for the lord to visit his treasury and cellar with his most dangerous – or expensive – prisoners without stepping outdoors.

Oleg took in the castle at a glance, estimated the thickness of walls, the location of windows and rooms. His intuition pointed at a small guarded window at the ground level. The yard was still empty, the moon covered by a shaggy cloud, so he adjusted the sword belt, ran along the top of the wall and kneeled, ready to slip down into the dark.

Huge inhuman hands emerged from the darkness on his left. Oleg was late to stir away: strong fingers had grasped his neck. He gave no cry of pain and astonishment only because his throat was squeezed. He felt lifted up in the air. His head jerked back almost at the point of breaking the neck. Another monstrous hand hit Oleg’s arm, the one with the sword he managed to draw out despite pain. The sword disappeared, with a brief flash in the moonlight.

His arm got numb of the heavy blow. Through pounding in ears, he listened to hear steel tinkle on the stone but it was quiet as if the sword fell into a haycock. Gasping, he grabbed the fingers on his throat but could not remove them: his right arm was dangling. His was getting weak quickly. With a soft growl, the monster pressed him to the tower wall. The moon came out, and Oleg felt deadly cold, as he found himself in the grasp of a fierce grinning troll!

Wheezing, Oleg kicked the tower wall to push off. He flung away together with his enemy who stopped on the very brisk of the wall, his foot hung off. The monstrous teeth snapped straight before Oleg’s eyes, but the fingers unclenched: the troll had no wish to fall down on the stones, even with prey in his clutch. Staggering, Oleg rubbed his throat, backed two steps and jumped down briskly on the lower cross-wall, visible in the moon light.

His trembling legs failed him. He fell, everything went dark with pain, as his injured arm was pressed down. He rose hastily, gasping still. The troll could have killed him from an ambush, with a sword or a hammer-like fist, but the beast loathed people, he craved to see the agonizing face of a man seeing his death and trembling with fear, to enjoy his agony and terror!

He had barely got up when the troll jumped down to him softly, like a giant cat, although twice as heavy as Oleg. A curved blade glittered in his right hand. Oleg leaned against the wall desperately: a deadlock, but the troll didn’t raise the sword. He could hack Oleg’s head off, slash his body slantwise or down to the waist, but that was too easy death!

Suddenly, Oleg grasped what the troll wanted: to slash his belly open, guts to fall out, death be inevitable, but last long, very long, and the victim to know it coming, to wail in fear, to crawl, with the wet grey tangle of his entrails dragged behind…

He gathered his last strength, pushed off the stone and leapt on the troll, his right foot aimed at the sword paw, his left one – at the groin. The troll stirred, the sword slipped off his finders and went tinkling down the stairs, but Oleg’s left foot missed and kicked the monster’s hip instead. The troll reeled, his blood-colored eyes flashed like burning coals when the wind blows ashes off them. Oleg alerted, fell on his back, defenseless like a baby before a wolf. The troll hung over him, huge and ferocious… and rushed for the blade.

The sword lay a floor below, shimmering like a fish just out of water. The troll stooped for it. Oleg jumped down at him, kicked his back with both feet.

Any man’s spine would have been broken like an overdried splinter, but the troll only collapsed, his body rolled a floor downstairs, with a thunder of bones. Oleg felt cold when he saw a glitter in the black paw – the troll had seized the sword!

Gasping for air, Oleg rushed back to the top of the wall. The cellar where they keep Thomas is straight beneath, but this mad beast in the way! Goodness knows how a troll got to this southern land… A cloud slipped on the moon, and everything went black. Oleg felt his back cold: he could barely tell the narrow passage along the top of the wall apart from the black emptiness. He clenched his fists and ran along the path. His heart sank with every step, as he expected his foot to find abyss…

The castle was an ordinary tangle of walls, towers, stairs, and landings made for defense, good to place catapults and blazing tar barrels at, but Oleg realized with fear that he got lost. He ran to the corner, rounded a watchtower with a sleeping sentinel inside and stopped, trying to figure out where he was.

The clatter of troll’s sharp claws on the stone was approaching, as the monster ran up the narrow stairs. The sword swung in his paw, glimmering in the moonlight. His ears were pointed and upright like a wolf’s, his big white teeth bare and gleaming.

Oleg retreated until he climbed on the observation deck, the highest point of the castle. Over the wooden railing, he saw stars: cold, far, and prickly on the sky as dark as sin, the ground far below in the blackness.

The troll sniffed, raised his head. His grin got broader, he went upstairs in a slower pace, bending slightly: a tight, alerted ball of bestial muscle.

Oleg retreated to the edge of the deck, looked around like an animal at bay. His right arm still ached, fingers bent poorly. The troll ascended slowly, in silence, his eyes fixed on Oleg. The broad curved blade shared the predatory glitter with the monster’s big teeth, the four curved jutting fangs the brightest.

Oleg’s back clung fast into the corner, the railing cracked. The troll climbed on the deck in five steps. Their eyes met. Seeing the runaway fully in his power, the troll grinned with malice. He made a step forward, yellow saliva foamed in the corner of his thick lips. He watched the victim’s face with delight. It was a helpless creature trembling before him, and he wanted to take all the pleasure of it, to the last drop, to revel in fear and awe before taking a life – with regret for impossibility to kill twice, trice, many times – taking it slowly, for the victim to see own death, inescapable and terrible…