The Grail of Sir Thomas

Chapter 12

  Suddenly they heard a clatter of hooves below. Five riders galloped, raising dust, to the foot of the hill, surrounded the horses of Oleg and Thomas. Two of them dismounted at once, untethered the horses, grabbed the reins. Gorvel saw it over Oleg’s head, bellowed in fury, “Blizzard! They stole my Blizzard!”

  Oleg glanced back, rocked aside at once, in case Gorvel took the chance to hit. At a glance, Oleg saw among the riders a horse with ornate harnesses, empty saddle and a big swollen bag behind it. Gorvel watched the strangers in fury, making no attempt to attack Oleg. The burglars rode slim, short-legged horses, so the stallions of Franks stood out by their might and height.

  “The cup in your bag?” Oleg asked.

  “I’m not the one to carry it on my back!” Gorvel snapped.

  “Sir Thomas was.”

  “Did it help him?”

  “You’d better not have left it in the bag!”

  “There’s no use crying over spilt milk.”

  The strangers who had taken their horses started to remove and untie the saddle bags. Two of the men laughed, as they pointed at the furious knight on the mountain. Gorvel cursed, and went straight to Oleg, looking past him. Oleg stepped aside. Gorvel ran down faster, shouting threats. The sword in his hand cast orange lights around.

  Oleg bent over Thomas, put his palm on the knight’s pale sweaty forehead. “Take heart, Sir Thomas. Your life is in your hands.”

  “In the hands of the Holy Virgin,” Thomas reproached in a whisper.

  “In yours,” Oleg objected angrily. “Don’t you see? Sir God refused to take your knightly soul that soon. You haven’t delivered the Holy Grail, so don’t show a white feather. Heading for paradise, I mean. Get up. It’s not the time for eternal rest yet.”

  Thomas stirred with a groan. To his own great surprise, he managed to sit up, though contorted with acute pain. “The mountain chewed me up and spat me out.”

  “Yeah, but it came to grief over your armor! First time I’ve seen the point of it.” Thomas made a faint but proud smile. Oleg decided not to say that, despite the heavy armor having saved the knight’s life, without it he would have dodged in time.

  They heard a shout of fury, the clang of steel below. At the foot of the hill, Gorvel backed up, beating off two marauders. The third one lay in a puddle of blood. Gorvel lunged, the second marauder fell down with his head slashed in two, but the next moment they heard a clatter of hooves, as several more riders, apparently marauders from the same gang, rushed out from the other side of the hill, screamed, unsheathed their sabers, and galloped on Gorvel.

  Gorvel wheeled round, ran up the slope. Three marauders dismounted and rushed after him, falling on the steep ground, clinging at the rocks. Despite his armor, Gorvel was a fast climber. Only once had the fastest of burglars come upon him, but Gorvel heard his rattling breath, dropped at once, his sword swished low to the ground. The marauder uttered a dreadful scream: the curved blade slashed his knees.

  Panting, clutching at stones and grass, Gorvel climbed up, straight to where Thomas was sitting. Oleg raised his knife and, once Gorvel was three steps away, flung it. Gorvel had no time to dodge, his eyes widened in mortal fear – but the knife swished by, almost having cut his ear off. Gorvel heard a hoarse cry behind, wheeled round, raising his sword, but the marauder who had come upon him was sinking down, his teeth bared in a silent cry, the knife hilt in his throat. Gorvel cast a sullen look at the wonderer, hesitated for a moment, tugged the knife out and hurled it back to Oleg. “Thank you. I didn’t expect that.”

  Oleg caught the knife in the air, shoved it into the cover. “We’re in the same boat so far,” he said.

  Thomas winced, as if he had a pang. “I’ve always revered pilgrims for their wisdom!” Gorvel said hastily. He turned his back to Oleg as a sign of trust. Oleg drew his bow quickly, took an arrow with his fingertips. The marauders were slow climbers, stumbling and falling. Oleg allowed them three score steps before he shot four men. The rest collapsed on the rocks, cursing.

  “Excellent shots!” Gorvel admired. “I’ve always advocated equipping our army with bows. Civilization is to replace the dated rules of morality.”

  “A dishonorable weapon!” Thomas objected. He waited for a pang to pass and forced out, “A coward can kill a brave man, a weak one can kill a strong one. The culture is against…”

  Gorvel smirked but said nothing, as he glowered at the knight. Thomas started getting up. Oleg handed the sword to him. The knight leaned on its cruciform handle, rose to his feet, reeling. One of the robbers looked out, intending to run to another shelter. Oleg’s bowstring clicked at once. The white feather bloomed in the marauder’s chest on the left, he waved his hands, fell on his back, rolled down.

  Gorvel clicked his tongue. “Splendid! The main thing is to damage the enemy. Honest or dishonest… that will be forgotten. The winner is always right. There are no foul ways while at war. All is good that brings victory. It’s the law of civilization!”

  Thomas blushed, straightened up with great effort but Oleg stopped him with his palm raised. “Civilization against culture – that’s a long battle. Our great-grandchildren will see the end of it. And we have simpler matters to settle. How much water have we?”

  “Two water skins of mine,” Gorvel said. “On my horse.”

  Thomas curled his lip. “A pie in the sky is closer!”

  They heard a cry from behind the rocks where the marauders were hiding from the arrows, saw one of the robbers waving a white kerchief. Oleg raised his hand to show he had no weapon in it, and the man shouted, “Hey you, noble knights! We know it is your habit to carry gold and jewels in your belts. Leave your arms, armor, and clothes – and you can go away. We are not Hazars. We don’t need your lives. Only your gold.”

  Thomas said nothing, his loathing look all but burning holes in Gorvel’s armor. Gorvel stirred nervously, shooting glances at Thomas, the wonderer, and marauders. “How can we see,” Oleg cried loudly, “that it was enough?”

  “Sir wonderer, how can you?!” Thomas whispered indignantly.

  “A stratagem, you fool!” Gorvel interrupted bluntly. “Go on, sir… what’s your name. Keep haggling!”

  “You won’t stand up to our attack!” the marauder shouted. “There are twelve of us… eleven. All former soldiers of the Crusade!”

  “Twelve or eleven?” Oleg cried back.

  “Eleven,” the marauder snapped. “We’re no lousy footpads who took knives for the first time and went on the road! We fought our way across Cilicia and Palestine. We took Saracen cities by storm!”

  “We need to have a counsel,” Oleg replied. The marauder subsided behind the rocks. Oleg turned to Thomas and Gorvel. “What will we do?”

  “Attack them,” Thomas said with dignity, in a husky manly voice. “Throw them down to the foot and shake their souls out!”

  “A fitting answer!” Oleg said with admiration. “Noble and brilliant! Knighthood in all its beauty. Now I’d like to hear something different. Sir Gorvel?”

  Gorvel combed his fire-red beard with his five fingers thoughtfully, glanced back at the scatter of stones, the helmets of the marauders shimmering behind it. “Only two good passages lead into this cleft. I can defend any of them against any host: they can only come by one or two. And you close off the other passage.”

  “Less spectacular but more practical,” Oleg agreed. “But it’s noon, and all they need is to wait for the night come. They know where we are. In the dark, they will climb higher and shower us with darts and stones.”

  They drank the remnants of water from Oleg’s flask. Gorvel refused proudly, though he suffered no lesser thirst than Thomas. Oleg did not insist, poured the last drops into the pale knight’s mouth. Thomas tried to take the upper part of his armor off. Oleg helped him with it, whistled at the sight of solid bruises. Thomas moaned when Oleg’s huge hands started to set his joints right, to knead his body, making the blood flow through it again. Big beads of sweat ran down t
he poor Angle’s face, his eyes rolled up eerily.

  At last Oleg stopped his work. Pale as death, Thomas rose up to his feet, crouched to test his muscle. “Sir wonderer,” he said in a tight voice, “you are the best healer that ever came into this world! My bones are burnt, as if I were in the Hell that awaits mean Sir Gorvel, but my sinful body obeys! My hand keeps the sword.”

  Gorvel was sitting aside, scowling from under his bushy eyebrows. His eyes flashed with a strange expression, which Oleg would call compassion. “Timely. You’ll need it soon,” Gorvel told Thomas in a flat voice.

  “We’ll grind the marauders into dust,” Thomas promised. “And then I’ll kill you, a foul thief who disgraced the knighthood!” Gorvel gave him an ironic bow but kept his sword in hand.

  The sun was sinking, the marauders peeped out from behind the rocks. Two of them sharpened their swords demonstratively, talking to each other. Only one robber remained at the foot, not to mention two wounded men. The rest were climbing up unhurriedly to attack in the dark.

  Thomas snuffled angrily, piercing Gorvel with fiery looks. His fingers went white, as he gripped the sword hilt. Gorvel was on edge, tucked his legs under him, ready to jump up at any time.

  Oleg raised his hand and spoke slowly, “Perhaps we’ll all die soon. A good moment for truth, isn’t it? Sir Gorvel, you have startled everyone, I would say. The king made a gift to you: vast lands in your use forever, lots of villages and hamlets with their small folk. Your castle, faithful vassals, your beautiful wife who was about to bear your heir… You abandoned all of it suddenly! And became an outlaw. You ran away from your own castle. Why? What for?”

  Gorvel replied with a gloomy smirk, silent and mysterious.

  “What rank?” Oleg asked suddenly.

  Gorvel shot a glance at him and said nothing. Oleg drew a figure of eight upside down in the air. Gorvel’s eyes widened. Oleg drew another sign, his eyes fixed on Gorvel’s face. The knight twitched, hardened his sword grip. Oleg drew a line and encircled it. Gorvel went pale and jumped up. “That… That’s impossible!”

  Thomas shifted his startled gaze from the red-bearded knight to the wonderer.

  Oleg smiled malevolently. “Oh, I see. You are just an apprentice… But they would have raised you to a master for the Holy Grail? Hum. They could move you straight into…” He stopped in the middle of a sentence, drew a complicated symbol.

  “Who are you?” Gorvel asked in a stunned whisper. “How do you know our secret signs?”

  Oleg drew a new symbol. “And this?” he asked quickly.

  Gorvel’s voice gave a quaver. “A symbol of upper ranks. I’m not allowed… Are you a Grand Master?”

  Oleg shook his head slowly. “I could have deceived you. As I know the rites and secret symbols, I could make you obey blindly… Sir Thomas, this man is a member of the secret society that has more power than any king or emperor. It has the most loyal servants: the ones who serve not their king or seignior, not any man but Idea!”

  “Which?”

  “The idea of progress. The idea of civilization.”

  Gorvel scowled. His face expressed distrust, doubt, even fear, as if he were thinking the wonderer was playing some game, about to reveal himself and give a sign that would make him, Sir Gorvel, obey implicitly. And he will obey, as he obeyed the night rider who showed a secret symbol and ordered him to leave all the wealth acquired by hard work, to steal the cup and bring it, as fast as he can, to the indicated place. “Is it a wrong idea?” Gorvel asked in a palpating voice.

  “Once Diogenes was asked: why did he praise the verse of a bad poet for all to hear? And the philosopher answered: for he was writing verse instead of robbing! In our world, every idea is better than robbery. Any idea implies order, hierarchy of values, obedience to no men but law. When an Eastern despot conquers dozens of neighboring kingdoms with sword and fire, and unites them into a large empire, it is the lesser evil, ‘cause it puts an end to bloody wars between those kingdoms and the roads are cleaned of robbers, and merchants are free to carry their goods and caravan ways turn safe and peaceful villagers are spared from sudden forays… But despotism is evil. The barbarian kingdoms of Europe, with all their roughness, give people more freedom, give feelings of pride and dignity. A better thing, as I’ve said, is to serve no king, even the noblest one, but a noble Idea… But, Sir Thomas, you have seen that the idea of civilization is only good against extreme savagery!”

  Gorvel watched him warily and silently. At last, he asked uncertainly, “What is above civilization?”

  “Culture,” Oleg replied – and realized he’d lost the battle for Gorvel’s soul. The face of red-bearded knight changed at once: his watchfulness replaced by a deep and blunt contempt. His shoulders relaxed, he glanced back to where the marauders were gathering behind a stone ridge, ready for the final attack.

  Thomas, who was watching the wonderer with confusion, alerted at once, jumped up and moaned: he’d forgotten his body, beaten by rocks. Below, in the dusky valley, riders were galloping from far away. Their horses rushed in wild fear, dripping with lather, the riders clung to their manes with no look back. In half a mile behind them, there was a vague mass approaching. In the dusk, it took Oleg some time to discern lots of galloping horses, their riders half-naked and beastlike, with flying black hair.

  Gorvel and Thomas peered there anxiously, as they heard a menacing clatter of many unshod hooves. The marauders turned to the valley. Thomas found his voice at last. “Sir wonderer… Those are Khazars? Or Hazars, I mean?”

  Not bothering to reply, Oleg unsheathed his sword and raised it overhead. The blade glared in the setting sun, poured bright lights into the dark valley. Gorvel scowled at the sword in the pilgrim’s hand, with astonishment and anxiety for the weapon’s size and the ease with which the strange companion of Sir Thomas wielded it.

  At the foot of the hill, the riders rushed at full tilt to the marauder guarding the horses. He spun around in confusion, holding the frightened horses. At last it dawned on him to mount, but he barely had time to take the reins when the screaming horde was upon him, a glitter of many narrow sabers. Several Hazars galloped on after the runaways, catching up with them: the horses of the Hazars looked much lighter.

  Oleg whirled his sword once more in the red light of sunset. Suddenly, the first of the runaways vaulted off his horse, fell, rolled over his head, got up and started climbing the slope. Two others followed him: abandoned their horses, ran up on all fours, their arms and legs moving briskly.

  In three score steps from the cleft with two knights and the pilgrim, the marauders spun in confusion, like loaches on a hot pan. The three runaways were pursued by dismounted half-naked barbarians. The marauders were on their way. Two of them made up their mind at once, leapt out of the shelter. Before Oleg dropped his sword and snatched the bow, they had dashed aside and vanished among stones, with only a clatter of pebbles beneath heavy boots. A thickset bare-breasted marauder in a feathered helmet turned to the cleft and cried, “Hey! Those devils took our horses!”

  “Grudge?” Oleg said with surprise. “You stole them!”

  “Took as loot,” the marauder objected. He eyed the Franks, then the Hazars whose bodies glistened with sweat. There were two scores of them pursuing the runaways, the rest galloped at the foot of the mountain, whooping and whistling. “Any ideas?” the marauder cried.

  “Why do we need ideas?” Oleg replied arrogantly before Gorvel or Thomas could say a word. “You got between the hammer and the anvil. We’ll stay above and watch you skinned, your guts dragged out, your bones broken… You’ll have a very slow death: Hazars are skillful in it. And they love it.”

  The marauder twitched his mouth in a smile. “Should you be upset by seeing the details badly? They’ll do the same to you, won’t they?”

  “I’m persuaded,” Oleg replied carelessly. “Drag your gang here!”

  The marauder gave out a short cry. His men jumped up and followed their leader up the slope, hurr
ied by the terrible beastly howling of Hazars coming from behind.

  Thomas gasped with indignation, his face turned red, eyes popped out. “Sir wonderer! How dare you! I can tolerate you accepting this rat – he was a brave knight long ago. But these… they…”

  Gorvel gave a predatory smirk. “…once were soldiers of our glorious hosts,” he jeered. “That’s all right. Look! There are some worse men running! And I swear on the Holy Grail that your strange pilgrim will accept them too!”

  The Black Beard and two of his gang were climbing behind the marauders, almost caught up with them. The robbers had exhausted faces stained with mud, the last one had his hair matted and it stuck up, like a comb, with dry blood. However, the three of them retained their sabers and daggers, bows and full quivers looking out from behind their shoulders.

  Thomas was seething, his voice lost to fury. Gorvel looked ready for anything, his back pressed on the steep hillside, the gleaming sword in hand – but his eyes were fixed on the pilgrim, his whole manner showed he was just an armored warrior while all the leadership and responsibility was upon this… very holy pilgrim.

  The marauders were the first to run to the shelter. Oleg nodded towards the left end of the cleft. They obeyed at once, as former soldiers, stood there with bare swords and closed shields.

  The robbers came running, rattling, frequently collapsing on the ground. “You didn’t come,” the Black Beard cried hoarsely. “We decided to follow…”

  “Guard the right end,” Oleg ordered. The Black Beard nodded, his chest heaving. The three of them put arrows on bowstrings, turned to the hill foot. Hazars were running up fast, bent forward like spiders, moving their limbs briskly, stones poured down from under their feet.

  “They have no bows,” Oleg said. “Let them get as close as possible!” He could have shot any Hazar by that time, but the robbers would also start shooting their cheap bows of village hunters then. Unfeathered, unsighting arrows. It will be good for them to hit in twenty steps. “Shoot after I do,” he warned severely.

  He waited for a while, shot an arrow into the breast of a big Hazar, almost the last of the climbers, his fingertips took another arrow at once, it went straight into another foe’s eye, then he shot the third Hazar, the fourth, always selecting the farthest ones, as the closer would be reached by the robbers.

  Below, there were ferocious cries, screams, shrieks, clangs of steel. Five out of the twenty Hazars had run up to the crevice. The marauders jumped out to meet them with flashes of curved swords. A cut-off forearm fell to Oleg’s feet. Hazars screamed in high-pitched voices, marauders swore. Thomas and Gorvel rushed to help them but came at the moment when the last Hazar collapsed, splashing his blood around, on the dead bodies of congeners.

  The marauder with naked chest bared his teeth in a fierce smirk. “See the worth of a soldier guard, konung?” he cried to Oleg. “My name’s Roland.”

  One marauder was wounded, the rest splattered with the blood of others. Oleg climbed on a stone ledge. Below, at its very foot, a huge half-naked barbarian was fidgeting on his horse. His face was painted with colored clay, a saber glittered in his hand.

  “Make a fire,” Oleg said softly, without looking back. “Cut green twigs off the bushes behind you.”

  Gorvel raised his eyebrows in fascination. “Some magic?”

  “Yes,” Oleg told him. “The most powerful kind! They want to speak to us.”

  The robbers ran to the bushes eagerly, cut both shrubs just over their roots, while the marauders deftly made a fire for all to see. When blue-grey clouds of smoke began to rise, in uneven intervals, above the Hazar camp, Oleg covered the fire with branches, removed them, put them down again for a while and flung them away: the green leaves had rolled up in tubes, the thick smoke about to turn to fire. He stood up, fingered the hilts of his throwing knives. “I’ll go and see what they want.”

  “Go to those devils?” Thomas cried in awe.

  Gorvel watched him with disapproval. Marauders and robbers, bunched in two close groups, argued with heat, cast suspicious glances at the pilgrim. The marauder who called himself Roland said loudly, “Are you going to sell us to those beasts?”

  Oleg did not reply. “Keep your sword bare,” he told Thomas. “We’ll meet at the middle, and you… you and Gorvel show you are ready to come to my aid. You’ll have a shorter run down than the Hazars – up the slope to their chieftain.”

  “Do you expect an ambush?” Thomas asked anxiously.

  “Just in case. It will come right if they see us at call to each other.”

  At the foot of the hill, the Hazars were roasting meat, turning a huge spit with a whole saiga. Horses had been taken away. A tall barbarian was climbing up the slope. His body was covered from head to feet with drawings in colored clay. A pair of short leather pants made all his clothing. His thick wrists gleamed with massive bracelets, and armlets of the same metal embraced his arms just above elbows.

  Oleg looked at him closer, slowed down his pace. The barbarian glanced above once or twice. As he saw his ruse discovered, he went up faster, in quick steps.

  Oleg shuddered as he watched the leader of Hazars coming. To the waist he was naked but looked as though clad in bony armor composed of many fragments, with their edges covering each other. Joints were marked by swollen scars that had turned bone or even stone. On his belt of coupled iron plates, he had a huge Arabian sword and, on the other side, an ax with curved blade.

  The Hazar was heavier and much bigger than Oleg. His legs resembled thick logs, he was all covered by the dark bark of his ‘bone armor’. No sword would slash through it, no iron arrow hit. Oleg remembered him as a fierce and fearless warrior, but as the years passed, his friends died, only few lived to be old and be killed, in the Khazarian way, by their own grandchildren for being useless – this one still rode fiery horses, made forays and brought captives. In the best years of Khazar Kaganat, he became a warrior hero, scary in his might.

  But ages had passed since then. The Kaganat was shattered by the sudden blow of the furious Svyatoslav. The few Khazar survivors scattered, dissolved among neighboring nations. Only this invulnerable warrior, whom the last generations called Karganlyk, gathered a hundred of the same implacable fighters as himself and continued foraying. Not on Rus’, where a sure death awaited, but on Pechenegs and Kumans. He robbed them, going farther and farther to the south.

  Oleg looked into Karganlyk’s face, as motionless as a tortoise shell, with pity.

  Karganlyk’s stone jaws came apart slowly. “You again, my Old Enemy?” he roared.

  “I haven’t met you for ages, Karganlyk,” Oleg said instead of greeting, as he wished neither good day nor good night to such an enemy.

  “Why did the Old Sorcerer come again to the land of Khazar?” Karganlyk asked him,

  “The dog had a house,” Oleg replied gloomily. “Till the rain burnt it. Where do you see the land of Khazar?”

  Karganlyk stamped his foot angrily. “This is our land!”

  “The dog had a house,” Oleg said again. “The northern lands of the Khazar Kaganat were taken by the princes of North, the eastern lands – by Kumans and Pechenegs, and southern… But you came not to speak about the old times, did you? I have much to recall with pleasure, but why should you re-open the old wound?”

  Karganlyk glowered at him. The Hazar’s heart pounded, raising a hot wave. He had already been a field chieftain when he met that sorcerer. A sorcerer and hermit whose cave had been destroyed, so he walked across Khazarian steppes to the south to become, as he explained, an anchoret in the deserts. That was the time when Obadia had just adopted the true faith and burnt the old tribal gods, declaring them to be idols. He ordered them to capture the hermit and sacrifice him to the new god to mark his triumph. However, on the way to the nomad camp, the sorcerer managed to free himself, slaughter the five strongest warriors, and steal the best horses. Numerous pursuers were killed by his arrows or drowned in a bog. Only on the fifth day did Karganlyk
, with ten young daredevils, come upon him! And Karganlyk was the only one to survive, though his two arrow wounds still ached in bad weather.

  “Leave the others to me,” he said harshly. “And you may go. We are enemies but, strangely, I feel no hostility. You witnessed the grandeur of Khazar Kaganat, its glory! That’s why I don’t want to kill you.”

  “Well,” Oleg agreed. He watched Karganlyk’s motionless face closely. “I leave them all. May I choose a horse and things for myself?”

  Karganlyk nodded, his eyes were full of great astonishment, then he checked himself and added, “Not everything. You can take all the horses and things… save one small cup.”

  “It’s not gold,” Oleg spoke slowly, his eyes fixed on Karganlyk’s face. “Neither silver… Why do you want it?”

  Karganlyk moved his enormous shoulders heavily. “And you?”

  “It’s important for my friend. A sacred thing of his faith. But your faith is different.”

  “I strengthen it by throwing down the gods of others!” Karganlyk said sharply.

  “I’ve heard much of that… When you defile the shrines of others, you throw mud into the face of your god. You flung down the gods of Slavs, Normans, Bagdad, and Byzantium… but destroyed only a god in yourself.”

  “I’ll keep the cup,” Karganlyk snapped. “Take all the rest if you like!”

  Oleg nodded, his eyes were sad. “I see. Tell me: who set you on two lone travelers? We are entrapped. You can speak bluntly.”

  Karganlyk gazed at his old enemy. His painted face twitched, his lips stretched into thin lines, his sharp wolfish teeth flashed. He looked eager to say the dreadful truth, to fling it into his eyes, to see fear in the Old Sorcerer’s face – but Karganlyk remembered Oleg escaping in spite of being bound, or he was restrained by some other reason, and he only growled, “A dog is set on. And I’m a great chieftain! My life is guarded by gods.”

  “Yes,” Oleg agreed with no hint of jeer, “you’re a great chieftain. Of a great tribe. Though not numerous, is it? Do you have a hundred men? Ten years ago, you had a thousand. And twenty years ago – ten thousand. How many will you have next year?”

  Karganlyk clenched his stone jaws. He had barely held back from striking, his fingers fumbling about his belt. “One hero is enough to give birth to a new nation,” he said in a muffled voice. “You know it.”

  “I know,” Oleg agreed. “A hero. Not a beast.”

  Karganlyk’s eyes flashed. “Whilst I live, the people of Khazar live!” he snarled.

  “Even gods die,” Oleg told him.