Chapter 5
By noon, they entered a small village. The wonderer rode up to a remote house reeking of soot, burnt iron and rust. A strong, sturdy man came out to meet them, his leather apron covered in burnt holes. Oleg, staying in his saddle, asked, “Can you shoe a horse and unclench two iron rings?”
The man glowered at him. “I’ll have to make fire again…”
“That’s a pity,” Oleg said sincerely. “I thought you’d make use of two gold coins…”
The man wheeled round to the house, bellowed so loud that horses laid back their ears in fright. “Varnak, Boldyr! Warm up the forge, fast! Sharpen some nails!”
Oleg jumped off the horse. Thomas smirked understandingly, dismounted and gave the reins to the children that came running. The village smith had many children: some of them made the fire, others unsaddled and watered the horses, while his wife hastened to pluck a goose
The blacksmith’s eyes widened when he saw the collar on the noble knight’s neck, but he said nothing. Wielding his chisel and tongs quickly and skillfully, he unclenched the damned rings and threw them on burning coals to melt. No trace of us if the Baron’s overseers come to question. Oleg tossed two gold coins in his palm. The smith thanked him and dropped them on the sooty anvil. It looked accidental. Then he smiled, put the coins into his purse carefully.
Oleg smirked. “Something strange happened before?”
The smith shook his head in distress. “You won’t believe it, good man! Each summer I got foisted twice or thrice: gold or silver turns to dry leaves the next day! That was till I learnt no magic can stand iron and started to drop coins on my anvil. I’ve already caught a fraud. That fool swore he was duped himself. Maybe that wasn’t a lie. If he was a wizard, why did he do nothing when I… er… taught him a lesson?”
When he’d fixed a loose horseshoe, Oleg gave him one more golden coin. They rode away at once, the goose in their bag, in a hurry to get as far from the castle as possible.
The scorching sun was in zenith. The road meandered, beaten, trampled in the dry solid ground many centuries ago. Once it would have to round hills, turn to cities and groves, but as the ages passed, the cities had been ruined and groves cut down, so only the hills remained, though subsided by age. The road was making its way among ancient ruins. Some boulders, whitened by wind and heat, had rolled down onto the roadside.
“What is that wooden necklace on you?” Thomas asked curiously. “You keep touching it, as if afraid to get it filched.”
“My charms are not a necklace,” the wonderer said without turning his head.
“Charms? Do you charm with them?”
“Through them, I hear the gods give advice.”
Thomas laughed. “And I hear none!”
“Really? I hear a gang of robbers dividing their loot in that grove. And farther across the forest, there’s a village where we’ll find a shelter for night.”
Thomas gave him a skeptical look. “The village… you may have been there before. But the robbers… Well, let’s chop them up like cabbages!”
The wonderer winced, replied with disgust, “Can’t we do without a fight? We’ll better off to round them.”
He turned onto a side path to a grove. Thomas followed reluctantly. His stallion tossed his head up, snorted in excitement. Thomas shared his delight when he heard a small stream tinkle ahead. They broke through thick shrubs and saw a spring – a small lake, not larger than a knight’s shield, surrounded by fresh, sappy green grass. A spurt of water was rising in the middle of the sandy bottom. The grits of sand whirled, spun round and sunk, forming a smooth, round rampart that could belong to a tiny castle.
The wonderer unsaddled the horses and started gathering brushwood. Thomas considered skinning a hare to be a nobler affair than that, so he skinned it deftly, disemboweled and cleaned. “The arrow went through the heart! I admire you, sir wonderer! To hit a hare running across our way at forty steps, at full tilt!”
“We rode slowly,” Oleg reminded, frowning.
He struck fire, blew the spark up on the dry moss. Reddish flames started licking honey-yellow twigs timidly, then grew braver, gnawed deeper into the twigs that crunched like sweet bones in a dog’s strong teeth, sparks flying up. While Thomas fussed around the fire, choosing a place to fry the slices of meat, Oleg took a small camp bowl out of the bag silently and filled it with water. “Holy father!” Thomas exclaimed in amazement. “You’ve thought about everything!” He sliced the liver, stuck it on some thin barked twigs, fried it over the coals diligently, while the meat was boiled in the bowl. The wonderer had added some herbs to the stew, their aromas drifted over the tiny glade.
After the meal, they lay in a light shadow, watching the scorching sky through sparse branches. It was hot, with not a cloud.
The horses chewed grass nearby, nibbled the young sprouts of shrubs. Thomas put his hands behind his head, some pieces of his armor off, but his sword and shield close at hand. “What a wonderful world God created,” he said in quiet surprise. “Once I told Saracens that in winter in our country water turns as hard as stone. They made a mockery of me. If I said that our rains last for weeks, that we curse rains and showers, they would not believe that either. For them, each drop of water is worth its weight in gold, while we don’t know how to get rid of that water! My Britain is all wild swampy woods.”
“Rus’ is the same,” Oleg agreed.
“It’s in Europe too? The forests here are puny bushes as against ours. In our country, one can live a life without seeing the sky! And here everything is seen through, no place to stay alone. In our land, getting to a neighboring town is a dangerous journey across bogs, wild woods, messes of wind-fallen trees and bogs again and swamps and marshes!”
Oleg sounded sad. “If one of our princes wants to war another, he has first of all to send scout parties ahead to know the way. After the winter, there are always new lakes, bogs, flooded areas. Then he has half of his army pave roads and clean the way. And if an appanage prince refuses to pay tax, what’s the way to force him? More trouble than it is worth! It’s easier to attack Tsargrad7 than a neighbor entrenched in his bogs!”
“Is Rus’ all like that?” Thomas said doubtfully. “What about centaurs?”
“They belong to Southern Rus’. Some call it Scythia8, in the old way. Everyone is a rider there. It’s a space. No skyline there but a sky all round. Trees are rare but the grass is waist-high. They are the same nation but differ from us in clothing and hunting ways and prayers. The Forest and the Steppes have different gods.”
“God said no Gentile or Jew! To think it over, we’re all the same nation, though we speak different tongues. God’s decree is to become a single nation again!”
Oleg gave him a surprised look. His soft voice had a mocking tone hidden deep in it: “A single nation bowing to your only god? What about those who wouldn’t like it?”
Thomas punched the hot ground with his huge fist. “We’ll force them. It is what God inspired the Great Crusade for – turning Pagans to the true faith!”
Oleg tossed as if he were lying on sharp stones. “The world is changing,” he said in a low voice. “Indeed it is. Once men simply plundered. They did put it that bluntly: we’re going to plunder Tsargrad, they said. To get our winter coats in Persia. Going to war to take slaves from our neighbor, take loot and burn what we can’t take… Now we make wars to bring civilization to faraway lands. Yes, we’re plundering still but silent about it, ashamed of it. The millstones of culture mill slowly but surely.”
Thomas sat up, feeling his beliefs insulted. “What do you mean, sir wonderer?” he asked with dignity.
Oleg sat up too, looked at the sun. “We must go. By evening we’ll be in the village I mentioned – and we’ll part there. Your way is to Britain, mine – to Rus’. Or rather you can have some more rest and I shall ride on.” He got up, dusted off, made a deafening whistle. His horse tossed his head up, broke through the bushes to him timidly. Oleg jumped into the saddle, again with no tou
ch to the stirrups. The horse squatted under his weight.
“Your bowl!” Thomas cried.
Oleg waved aside. “Take it. A useful thing on a journey.”
“And you?”
“I’m used to being content with little.” He began to turn his horse.
“Wait, sir wonderer!” Thomas cried. “I accept your kind offer to ride to the village together. Every road seems shorter when you have a companion.”
The wonderer’s face expressed no joy. Probably he would rather stay alone with his thoughts of the High, but Thomas hurried to pour the rest of the stew on the burning coals, shoved the bowl into the bag, struggled into his armor hastily, leaving two important clasps on his back undone.
He climbed into the saddle with an effort: a hundred and ninety pounds of him, not to count the armor, but the destrier strolled on as he was used to, his huge steel horseshoes thumping on the ground.
They outrode some carts loaded with poor household chattels. Women and children sat there under awnings, while men drove the draft horses, so dry and slim-legged as if the violent heat had melted not only grease but also meat out of them. The men followed big Franks with unfriendly eyes but looked down when Thomas gave them a menacing once-over.
“Sir wonderer,” Thomas said suddenly. “We are both riding north from Jerusalem. We could travel together for much more than a day!”
The wonderer shook his head. “I’m not much a one for fighting.”
“At least we could ride side by side for a longer time! And if it comes to swords, I’ll cope myself.” He bit his tongue when he remembered that the wonderer had witnessed his last ‘coping’. He was the one who nursed Thomas back to health, curing him with herbs and dressing his wounds.
“No,” the wonderer said firmly. Thomas realized that nothing was to change his mind. “I am another sort of man. Your road is different, as your life is. Besides, you are secretive. I feel a strange thing about you. A very strange thing. And a danger I can’t fathom.”
“Danger?” Thomas repeated in perplexity. “Which one? Life is full of dangers. Especially a knight’s life.”
For a moment, the wonderer rode silent. The knight fidgeted impatiently, waiting for his answer. “Other danger,” Oleg said reluctantly. “Somehow related to the cup. But how? I don’t get it.”
“Your charms told you that?” Thomas whispered in a superstitious fear.
“So they did.”
Thomas crossed himself, spat over his left shoulder and cast a cautious glance around. They were riding through a deserted place. “Our Lady, preserve and protect!.. If you think bad of me, sir wonderer, it’s all my fault. You saved me twice and I mistrusted you… Sir wonderer. The cup I bear is really more than a cup!” He fell silent. Oleg rode by his side, still, stalwart and frowning as he looked at the way ahead. “Sir wonderer, have you heard of… the Holy Grail?”
Thomas held his breath. He had said the last words almost in a whisper, but they sounded thunder to him.
The wonderer shot a blade-sharp glance at him. “Is it… that one?” he asked abruptly.
“It is,” Thomas replied in surprise. “You… know it? You, Pagan?”
“When Christ, the god of yours, was crucified,” Oleg said, “one of his followers placed a cup secretly to collect his precious blood… Was it that way? Since then, you hold that cup sacred. You call it the Holy Grail.”
Thomas glanced around with caution. “You see,” he whispered, “even you Pagans were reached by the fame of Holy Grail. Many knights set out to find it: Sir Galahad, Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain, Sir Percival… But we needed the Crusade to free Jerusalem, the Holy City, from infidel Saracens, to free the Holy Sepulcher and the holy places where Christ had walked…”
“How did you get the cup?” the wonderer interrupted.
“In a fierce fight, sir wonderer. I wouldn’t say it came rushing to my hands.”
“There’s a legend,” the wonderer spoke harshly, his eyes fixed on Thomas, “that only a pure soul may take the cup! Other men, it says, will get ill and die in throes…”
Thomas looked down. His cheeks blushed bright crimson, the color spread over all his face and to his neck. Even his ears flashed so brightly that one could light torches from them. “Sir wonderer… I may die in throes, but first I’ll deliver the cup to my blessed Britain! Let God’s grace fall on the heads of Angles, the people who worship Christ… and for whom I’m ready to give my life!”
Their horses walked side by side, so their feet in the stirrups touched. The field workers followed them with anxious eyes. Both riders looked enormous on the deserted road, neither a tree nor a bush near it. Their horses are Frankish – huge, heavy, stout-legged, their steel horseshoes crush the ground with a crunch. The massive knight’s armor is glittering in the rays of sunset as though covered with thick blood. The other rider is a clod of darkness: hooded, still and gloomy in his black cloak, its flaps flying like a black raven’s wings.
The sun set. The air started to lose its heat, very slowly. The horses cheered up, feeling a rest soon coming. The clear blue sky was darkening imperceptibly till it was a menacing lilac, and the pale sickle of the moon came out filled with ominous light. A sun of vampires and dead things to replace the live orange sun.
Thomas breathed in the fresh, chilly air happily. The violet sky changed to black. Stars hung straight overhead, bright and big, whole swarms of stars never seen in the northern sky.
“It is close,” Oleg told him. “That group of trees… It’s an orchard. There’s a house behind it. See it? Neither can I.”
“How do you know then?” Thomas wondered.
“I know”, the wonderer said indifferently. “As you know good places to build a castle, a smithy, a watchtower, so I know such places for orchards and houses.”
The moon was flooding the world with ghostly pallid light, only the areas beneath trees remained black as coals. Horses walked on a trodden road but the riders could barely hear the sound of hooves. Somewhere behind the trees, frogs were crying in strangely stern, metal voices. Thomas doubted whether it was frogs. Here, in a desert? Oleg pointed silently at the trees: metal trills were coming from the branches.
The roof of a small house was seen from a distance, surrounded closely by curly, well-groomed trees. The flat earthen roof was moonlit, the rest of the house dark. Thomas and Oleg heard some risen male voices, drunken shouts, then a loud, insistent knock on the door.
They reined their horses to a slow pace. Trees hid them, allowing them to approach within dart-throwing distance. They stopped on the edge of a broad moonlit lawn near the house. Before the porch, several motley-clothed men were laughing, passing among them a wicker basket with a narrow jug mouth sticking out from it. One of them hammered at the door with his fist and roared, “Open the door! Open it, you stupid woman! Or we break in!”
A faint female voice replied from inside. “What do you want? Go away!” She sounded scared, almost weeping,
“You know what we want!” the man cried hoarsely. “Let us in!”
“I have a knife to protect myself!”
Thomas breathed faster, his face contorted scarily, dark in the faint moonlight. Oleg hemmed with sympathy, his eyes thoughtful. The knight was shaking with fury, his eyes popped out, his lips white and trembling. He seized his helmet and slapped it on. The visor shielded his face with a clink.
The man at the door roared with laughter. His friends cried cheerfully. One of them ran onto the porch, shouted in drunken boldness, “You can’t stab all of us! But you can… ha ha!.. sate all of us if you try your best!”
“I brought true men to amuse you!” the first man cried in a hollow voice. “Open it, silly!”
They heard a woman weeping inside. “She can’t kill all of you but we can!” Thomas cried, his voice constrained with fury.
The laughter stopped. In full silence, men turned to the trees. Their hands gripped daggers, axes and swords. The horses beneath Oleg and Thomas stood motionless, as wel
l as the robbers. Apparently, they had been the masters of night up to that day, no one dared to challenge them. “Hey,” one of them cried from the porch, “whoever you are! Stay where you stand, and you’ll be safe. Or go to hell if you don’t want your bones dragged away by dogs!”
Thomas roared with a creepy laugher, like a mighty lion to a jackal sprawled in his paws. “My bones? Your bones are straw for my sword!”
Two robbers stirred at last, started to move closer to the darkness beneath the trees. Oleg drew his bow-string briskly and seized an arrow.
The robbers came closer, their eyes made out the dim shapes of the riders when Oleg put the arrow on. The bow string clicked, his fingertips gripped another arrow at once, he made a shot, seized the next arrow… The quiver was over his shoulder, so the wonderer could pull an arrow out, put it on the bow and shoot it with a single move, and he did it with such lightning speed that Thomas had barely driven his horse into a heavy gallop when several arrows swished by him in a sequence. Someone near the house shouted in fury.
Thomas burst out of the shadow with roar, bent down to the horse’s neck, his lance pointed ahead. The two closest robbers froze on the spot, advancing their daggers. Thomas pierced one through like a leaf, his bones crunched under the lance, another was trampled by his destrier. The night filled with terrible cries. Men were running away from the house, falling. In the ghostly moonlight Thomas saw glittering silver feathers in their necks, backs and breasts. The arrows went easily into the flesh of half-naked robbers.
Thomas’s lance had been left behind, so he pulled out a sword, slashed the third robber slantwise, brandished at the next one but saw a white bloom opened at his chest, with a wooden stem. The robber fell to his knees, blood gushed out from his mouth. Thomas yelled, shook his sword at Oleg. The last three were fleeing along the road, their coal-black shadows darting ahead of them like night birds. Thomas bellowed and drove his warhorse after them.
Oleg rode out of shadows slowly, an arrow on his bowstring. He watched and listened, but there were only death rattles and moans in the night. Soon he heard the thud of hooves that amplified to thunder. A big ferocious knight burst out onto the lawn in all his magnificence, a huge sword slantwise in hand, big drops falling on the ground from the blade. He seemed to be just out of butchery, even his horse splashed with blood.
“You killed them all!” Thomas barked at Oleg. “Could you have been a slower shooter?”
“As a child, I was taught to have seven arrows in the air.”
“We are not in your Pagan Rus’! Here, in the Christian world, men can barely shoot at all.” He pulled up, made a circle around the lawn. The wounded men tried to crawl away, moaning, leaving dark traces of blood behind. Soon they got silent and motionless, with their fingers dug into the ground.
The door was opened with caution. A pale female face appeared in the slit, then her thin hand. Making sure of no robbers on the porch, the woman came out silently: small, thin in waist, her eyes big and scared.
Thomas waved his metal hand at her. The sword, dark with blood, was still in it. The knight checked himself, wiped the blade hastily and sheathed it. Oleg took the bowstring off, hid the bow in its case. The woman ran down briskly, her heels tapped on the porch as a squirrel’s paws. She bent over a wounded robber, turned him to his back.
Thomas touched the reins, his stallion moved closer to the woman, like a dark mountain, the ground trembling and thumping under his hooves. The woman jerked up her head, her face pale, her eyes wide with fear. “Thank you for your interference, noble knight,” she said quickly.
“It’s my duty,” Thomas replied gallantly.
“Now… please help me carry this man into the house.”
“What for?” Thomas wondered.
“To put him to bed, to dress his wound!”
Thomas’s gauntlet slapped on the saddle. “Woman! You feel pity for a beast who wanted to take you by force and kill you! Let him die. As a Christian, I’m never angry with the dead.”
“Then you should have killed him at once!” she objected passionately. “Now the fight is over, it’s time to lick wounds. I won’t have a man die at my door! Even if he’s no man but an evil wolf!”
Oleg dismounted. “Open the door. I’ll help.”
He seized the wounded man by his collar and belt. The woman ran up the porch. Thomas dismounted, his good spirits lost. This silly woman knows nothing. The beginning was fine: a cry for help, a brief fight, a woman saved – but then all of it turned to folly. Provincial woman! And the wonderer could be expected of even less so. A Pagan, uneducated, just out of caves where one can hardly learn any good manners.
While the man was put to bed and Oleg dressed his wounds and the woman – Chachar was her name – warmed some water, Thomas examined the bodies outside. Five dead, two wounded badly, unconscious, hardly able to breathe. Thomas was glad the merciful woman had not noticed them. He took out his misericord, a long narrow dagger made to finish wounded knights off through a visor slit, and stabbed their throats.
Five robbers were killed with arrows: shot in the head, in the throat, two shot in the heart, and Oleg’s arrow in the back had also reached the heart. One man was stuck with lance like a bug mounted with a pin. The one trampled by the destrier had been carried to the house. On the road, Thomas had run down and slashed three more. Overall, he had sent to Hell five – as many as the wonderer.
Cheered up a bit, he tethered the horses and started to pull the arrows out. The force with which the wonderer had sent them was amazing. Some men were pierced through. By the time he plucked all five arrows, he got all covered with blood again, like a butcher. Bow is a dreadful weapon. The Holy Church had a purpose to oppose it and to prohibit crossbows, or arbalests, at all. With a bow, even a coward can slay a hero. If heroes die and ambushed cowards remain safe, it will put an end to courage. Battles should be honest: breast to breast, face to face!
He wiped the arrows clean, washed himself in the barrel of water near the porch and went into the house.