The Grail of Sir Thomas

Chapter 25

  They left Constantinople early in the morning and paid a double duty for their leave. Thomas could not fathom it; if they had paid their entrance to the city, why should they pay when leaving it? The guards on the gate, seeing his enormous figure and long sword, decided not to bully them. They explained he had expensive armor on and could probably sell it to barbarian chieftains, the enemies of the capital city. Thomas got furious and yelled that so-called barbarian kingdoms had plenty of their own weapons; his armor was forged by Angles, while smiths in their rotten Constantinople could only hammer bad iron, and good steel was brought there from East!

  “And from the North,” Oleg added helpfully. “From Kiev, where good Haraluzhian swords are made. Carolingian and Merovingian swords are also valued more than the pieces of iron made here.”

  He paid the duty for both of them to the angry guards who’d already cried for legionaries from neighboring posts for help and surrounded Thomas. The knight was itching to fight. He spoke of his knightly honor insulted, of the pride of noble Angles from the banks of the Don. At last, he asked Oleg with irritation, “Sir wonderer, didn’t they offend us?”

  By that time, they had passed the gate, but Thomas kept his hand on his sword hilt. “So what?” Oleg replied indifferently, immersed in his secret thoughts. “They offend, but we don’t take offence.”

  Thomas looked in his calm face with inquiry, then spat angrily in the road dust. “I don’t understand you Ruses.”

  “By chance you will, sometime…”

  “Oh, that mysterious ‘by chance’ again!”

  Oleg smiled absent-mindedly. Thomas noticed that was the first time, for many days, that the wonderer did not grip his charms every now and then. The dome of the sky, from one horizon to another, was blue. The road went across green plains with no winding, nor making loops like a running hare. On both sides were well-groomed fields, neat white houses. Fat cattle were moving lazily, as they grazed along the edge of the forest. The air was clean and seemed especially sweet after the sewage stench of Constantinople.

  Horses ran briskly into a wide stream, raised a cloud of silvery spray. Thomas looked with envy at the wonderer who had no burden of armor on him and could act in the Scythian way; stoop from the saddle at full tilt, scoop the clean water with his hands, splash it on to his face, screwing up with joy.

  Hares darted across their road, quails flew up from the thick wheat. Twice the travelers saw a herd of wild boars at the roadside. Involuntarily, Thomas seized his useless sword, cast begging looks back at the wonderer. Oleg rode on, straight as a candle, his face seemed to be carved of stone. Before leaving the city, they had bought enough food for a week!

  “Oh, how good!” Thomas said with enjoyment. “Each new day makes the road shorter and takes me closer to my snow-faced Krizhina… If no delays on the way, I’ll be on time. Even two days early!”

  Oleg pointed at tall towers blazing with crimson fire; they showed up at the very edge of their sight. “Zolochev. There we shall part.”

  Thomas darkened. “Sir wonderer…” he said warily. “You are the companion I could not even dream of! Why can’t we ride together for some more time? For a week, at least?”

  “If there were a way past Constantinople, we’d have parted earlier, Sir Thomas. But now all the broad space of Europe lies before us! Your road goes northwest, mine turns northeast.”

  “What is the name of your country?” Thomas asked in depression. “I shall tell others of the Great Scythia… er… Scythian Rus’…”

  “Just say Rus’,” Oleg said again, for the countless time. “Kievan Rus’! The Red Rus’. Ah, you will forget or confuse all the same!”

  Their horses, after they’d had a good rest in Constantinople, tried to break into a trot, but Oleg held them in. Thomas’s stallion bore six poods of the knight himself, two poods of his steel armor, a pood of the saddle bag, the Holy Grail and various camping things in it, and also the horse cloth, sweat clothes, the saddle, stirrups, girths, reins… And a tired horse can hardly drag along its own ear.

  Thomas all but dislocated his neck as he turned it to watch the ruins half a mile from the road. Being more curious than befitted a knight, he drove his horse in gallop to them. Oleg muttered a curse but had to follow him. Any rotten thing can be found in ruins like these.

  From the height of the saddle, Thomas gaped at the majestic ruins. Standing on a hill, he had a good view of the valley packed tightly with creepily gigantic remnants of palaces, city walls, grand fountains, all sticking out of the dry black soil, completely bare, with no grass growing on it. Some goats rambled at the edge of that black earth but none dared to step on it.

  Thomas looked around, his glance fell on a shepherd boy. “What great people lived here?” Thomas asked him. “Which great country was it? What divine fire did destroy it?”

  The shepherd boy blew his nose loudly, down to the legs of the Frank’s horse, holding each of his nostrils in turn with his thumb, wiped his palm against his dirty matted burnoose and replied gloomily, “Here sleeps my grandfather, wise Siyavush Sarhan-ogly. He knows all.”

  Thomas’s eyes found the old man who was dozy in the shade. The knight rode up to him, gave a bow from the saddle. “Please tell me, wise man, what was here?”

  The old man lifted up slowly his senile eyes, full of grief and sorrow, to look at the beautiful knight. “It was the greatest of cities… With its people wealthy, healthy, and beautiful. They had everything to be happy. But while a poor man only cares about food, the one who has plenty of it seeks nourishment for mind and soul. Unfortunately, a false prophet was passing across this land. Be damned into ages of ages the very name of Einastia! It was what he called his teaching. You see, Frank, what remained of the blooming city. And from that whole country, whose name is now lost and forgotten.”

  Thomas heard a move behind, Oleg turned his horse and darted away in gallop. So pale and scared he looked that Thomas rushed after him, having forgotten at once the shepherds, ruins, and the Einastia itself. “Is your head aching from the sun? Drink some water! Let’s get into the shade, for you to lie down and have some rest!”

  “No,” a hoarse groan came from the very depth of the wonderer’s chest. “Let’s go… away from here.”

  They failed to reach Zolochev by night, the darkness caught them in a poor village. They spent a night there. In the morning, they watered the horses, checked the horseshoes, and rode onto the road. Thomas smiled with restraint. In the short day before, they made over twenty miles. The horse would get tired over time, but even fifteen miles a day would bring him to the bank of Don with five or six days in reserve.

  Early in the morning, they bumped into ancient ruins again. Thomas knew those lands bore marks of many extinct cities and nations; he saw many of them before, but none were that colossal. With glassy eyes, he gazed at the monstrous slabs. “How?. Tell me, how could they break off such boulders? And drag them here, to the heart of desert? You see, no stone quarries close to here!”

  Oleg, grey and hunched in his saddle, looked ahead with glassy eyes. His face showed despair, his wrinkles got sharper, and the manly lines near his mouth turned bitter. “So they could…” he whispered.

  “But how?” Thomas exclaimed. He felt his hair raising the helmet with such a force that its belt was about to wrench his lower jaw. “How? The stones I trimmed were a hundred times smaller than these ones, but even those were fit for giants! I saw a hundred slaves harnessed in to drag each one, more hands than belts for them to seize!”

  A dirty boy, clad in only a faded, colorless loincloth, gaped at the two mighty Franks. “Do you know what it was?” Thomas asked.

  The boy shook his head, but as he saw the mighty iron Frank watching him with expectation, he said shyly, “A damned place.”

  “Why?”

  “Einastia,” the boy answered. He backed up and went white, as he spoke out this terrible word. “It’s Einastia!” He ran away, showing a dirty pair of heels.

&nb
sp; Thomas followed him with puzzled eyes. “It seems to me I’ve heard of this doctrine before… But then, if I recall it right, they smashed and destroyed everything… and here they were building till they worked their guts out and perished… No. I must have it confused!”

  “Certainly you must,” Oleg agreed hastily, “as you have travelled a lot. Tell me, how did your detachment storm into the gate of Jerusalem?”

  Thomas livened up, the majestic slabs forgotten at once. He assumed a dignified air; his back straightened up, his chest well out, straightening the caved armor. “Sir wonderer, that was a battle! A battle to tell our grandchildren or even great-grandchildren of, as the courage and valor of both the defenders of the Holy Sepulcher and the brave warriors who came to take it is unlikely to be surpassed soon!”

  The wonderer did not seem a very attentive listener, but Thomas was not petty and told the story willingly, in detail. Gradually, Oleg mellowed. He even seemed to be looking in the knight’s handsome manly face with joy, but then frowned, gripped his charms.

  “Was it my smile, with all hundred teeth, that frightened you?” Thomas mocked.

  “It was,” Oleg replied briefly.

  “Why?” Thomas alerted.

  “You are too merry, and trouble always comes unexpected… and, for some strange reason, always at the height of fun. And teeth… you have only thirty-two of them, by the way.”

  “So little?” Thomas was surprised. “I’d never think… I’m a knight, however. My business is to knock teeth out in jousting, not to count them. Let the literary men count, as their academies taught them to…”

  With light heart, he overrode the wonderer. Back in Constantinople, he had slain a fiend, an adept of Evil, one of the knights of Satan. Who would dare to impede his triumphant homecoming?

  Oleg rode behind. Thomas kept glancing back at him till his neck got sore. The wonderer grew darker and darker, he let not the charms out of his fingers. At last, Thomas felt the familiar creepy cold and got anxious. “Sir wonderer, haven’t we got done with it in Constantinople? We defeated such a mighty helper of Devil that souls in heaven frisk and sing praises to us! What else?”

  “I don’t know,” Oleg replied reluctantly. “I feel danger, a great danger, but can’t fathom… no idea at all where it may come from.”

  Thomas glanced at the Pagan charms with Christian indignation. Though they had saved their souls more than once, giving a timely warning, still they were Pagan, impious things! If he could learn to tell fortunes by the cup, or the nail in his sword hilt, there would probably be omens from Our Lady. Far more reliable and, which is most important, Christian ones.

  “You have almost nothing but beasts,” he remarked, casting jealous glances at the charms. “Wolves, bears, even dragons. And people so ugly… Some toads, birds, fish – what for? And only one sword! And one stirrup, as it never happens to be…”

  Oleg gave a sudden start, as though waking from a bad dream, looked around wildly. His eyes widened in fear, as if he saw some monster springing up on their way. “Sir Thomas! Sir Thomas, we need to pass between those stone hills as fast as we can!”

  Waiting for no response, he gave a shriek, whipped his horse, and burst into gallop. Thomas measured the way up to the hills with anxious eyes, spurred his horse. A destrier can run in gallop no more than three or four hundred steps. The attack of heavy chivalry is only to break the enemy’s lines, not to pursue. The knights crush into the first rows, piercing the foes with lances, then get stuck, slash heavily with swords and axes, while their foamy warhorses try to keep their legs, which are trembling with tiredness.

  The horse Thomas had could carry the heavy-armored rider for almost a mile, and there were less than it to the hills pointed by the wonderer… but if danger waited there, he would make a pretty nice fighter on a half-dead horse!

  The horse was speeding up, turning a terrible armored beast. Thomas could see no enemy, but his heart pounded like a hammer, blood ran in its vessels noisily and briskly. He warmed up, felt a fit of the sacred battle rage that some warriors had in common with ancient heroes and gods: furious Wotan, whose name meant “incensed,” battle-fervent Beowulf, Ruslan, Tor, Boromir, Aragorn…

  Far ahead, the wonderer darted, like an arrow, between two low hills formed by grey granite boulders crumbling with age, topped with young green firs that reached for the sky, their strong roots completing the ruin of hills.

  Only once did the wonderer glance back; to check whether the knight was following. The stubborn magician kept calling him “a brass head,” despite the three or four thousand years that had passed since the times of brass heads. Thomas’s head was protected with good steel, no puny brass of Trojans or Hellenes. He’s darting like a huge boulder shot from a catapult. The Devil himself will not stop a brave knight at full tilt!

  When Thomas’s stallion dashed between the hills – a hundred steps from one to another! – the ground under his hooves gave a shake, a heavy rumble came from below. The horse stumbled at a tilt, lost ground, and Thomas strained in mortal fear, as he imagined himself flying head over heels in full armor. But the horse kept its hooves and mended its pace. They darted past the hill. Thomas spotted it was no hill but a ruin of a very old tower or fortress… His peripheral vision caught a terrible glimpse of huge stone slabs coming apart, in smoke and thunder. The roots of young firs cracked, the ground opened wide, puffing black and grey smoke out… and within it, some monstrous, inhuman thing was rising from the bowels of earth!

  He felt a blow of heat on his back. The horse wheezed in terror. The wonderer reined up far ahead, waving to Thomas. His horse pranced, eager to rush away from the scary place. “Quick!” Thomas heard a bitter shout. “You still have time!”

  Thomas bent to the front arch. His horse rattled, his ears laid back as a hare’s. The wonderer turned his stallion, wrenching his lower jaw with the bridle. Thomas darted past them, only caught a glimpse of pale face and eyes goggled with despair. The road flew under the hooves evenly – a good one made by Romans! – but his horse had a rattling breath, bloodshot eyes, and the grey strip of earth was splitting into pebbles, grass, and trampled clay.

  “Keep up, keep up!” Oleg cried out like a spell. He overrode Thomas again, as if there was a more terrible thing ahead and he hurried to see it first, to ward it off, to protect his friend. Thomas saw the bow, sword, and arrows on Oleg’s back and his fear grew stronger; the wonderer had not even seized a weapon!

  He heard a heavy crash ahead, as if a mountain collapsed. The ground under him twitched to and fro again. A terrible roar made Thomas’s blood run cold. The roar was uttered by no animal but something dreadful, neither human nor beastly. A cry of pain and rage that a livened Tower of David could utter when the boiling tar streamed down its walls!

  Thomas took a chance to glance back. He gasped, went cold, his fingers all but dropped the reins. The hill had collapsed, like a molehill, big rocks rolled down onto the road. From a huge crater, some dirty-green monsters were climbing out; each as tall as a mounted man but thrice that long, more massive, covered with bony plates that resembled stone slabs. The massive head looked like a forger, if that could be the size of a proper barrel, topped with horns and spikes, its jaws belched with black smoke, shot crimson flames out, eyes hid in the narrow slit.

  The horse staggered, began to stumble. Thomas glanced back in fear. The first monster crept down, from the ruined hill onto the road, sniffed the tracks loudly and rushed, in giant leaps, after him. The other beasts were also coming, their bright-green bodies covered with duckweed from top to toe, as though they’d just come up from an underground bog. Each had a sharp bony crest along its back, jaws looked like a burning stove. The earth gave a moan when they dashed after the riders. Making heavy leaps, they looked like giant frogs whose bodies were stretched in a jump.

  “Sir wonderer!” Thomas cried desperately. “With deep regret I inform you that you’ll have to rely only on yourself! I can’t be helpful anymore, my horse will
fall in forty-eight steps…”

  “Won’t he make a hundred?” the wonderer bellowed, as he pulled up abruptly.

  “I know my weight, my armor…”

  “Then make the other fifty-two by shanks’ mare!”

  The horse rocked on the run, then fell. Thomas had taken his heavy boots out from iron stirrups, so he jumped down heavily. His tired legs failed him, he sprawled, face first, in the road mud and dust. A strong hand yanked him up by the shoulder, all but wrenched it out, a horrible voice roared in his ear, “Run to that oak!”

  Thomas forced himself to run as fast as he could. Right or wrong the wonderer is, he flounders, not waiting meekly for death to come. Thomas darted like a deer, jumped over logs and rocks. He felt amazed with his own might but then saw the wonderer’s horse galloping by his side. Oleg held the knight’s cloak behind firmly, helping him in his run and jumps.

  The roar and crash behind grew louder. They felt heat, smelt burning. Thomas tried to pull out his sword as he ran, but Oleg’s hand hit his elbow painfully. Thomas did not object, he only tried to survive in that run. Dying on the run would be a shame for a knight who spent several years running around the castle with a heavy rock on his shoulders, as that was a common way of training young Angles…

  The oak was getting closer, but everything swung and blurred in his eyes, his knees became weak. Thomas could not fall, the strong hand dragged him along. Suddenly he sank into icy cold, got stuck in it, like a fly in amber, but the wonderer yelled, pulled him ahead. With dim surprise, Thomas found himself up to the neck in water. The wonderer’s hot horse snorted and hoofed nearby, splashing Thomas all over. He seemed to hear his armor, red-hot with the mad run, hissing in the water and see the whitish steam raising.

  Oleg dragged Thomas out onto the bank. “Up the slope!” he rasped, hoarse and panting with effort. “Water keeps them back.”

  He vaulted off, his horse remained on trembling legs, all four spread wide apart, and the two men ran on… Precisely, the wonderer started to run but then came back to seize Thomas, in his armor with water gushing out of all slits, dragged the knight, as heavy as a mountain, made him move on. Thomas often fell in exhaustion, his wet armor got caked in earth, dry leaves, splinters. A frantic wasp flew into his open visor and stung his lip.

  The wonderer yelled for him to hurry. Finally, Thomas burst after him into thick green shrubs and fell down, motionless. There was a din in his head, a clatter of hammers in his ears, his heart trying to break the steel armor from inside.

  The wonderer’s legs were jutting out from the bush ahead. With effort, Thomas dragged his body, as heavy as a dead armored horse, to fall next to him. The wonderer was watching the road through twigs he’d moved apart. Thomas, faintly surprised at his own endurance, managed a turn on his side, looked out too.

  In a hundred steps down the slope a wide stream was gleaming in the bright sun, so shallow that one could clearly see small colored stones on its bottom, pebbles, water plants, and even small fishes, shiny in the sunlight. Thomas groaned with vexation. I had such a hard time crossing it as though it were a sea. I all but drowned!

  On the other side of the stream, huge monsters, about ten of them, were stamping their feet, hitting each other with their bone shells, bursting with mechanical roars. Thomas convulsed, dug his iron elbows deeper into the earth, clenched both his jaw and fists. Once he had seen a fire-spitting mountain, huge rocks flying out of its truncated peak, with terrible thunder, Hell’s fire and black smoke rising from it, and the blazing earth, fiery and melted, streaming down the slope. The beasts seemed to have climbed out of that mountain, which was called a volcano. In the name of the Pagan blacksmith god, but, in truth, there is no smithy underground but Hellish stoves for sinners. The Lord, in his mercy, sometimes allows people to see from a distance what lies below, for them to fear and abandon sin…

  “Secret Seven,” the wonderer said with unbearable bitterness. “Unchained these monsters! A savagery.”

  “Secret Six now,” Thomas replied as firmly as he could. “Where were they chained?”

  “There below. In the times of the old gods, these beasts lived on the earth, as numerous as rabbits. Then heroes destroyed them. The first Secret One hid the remaining ones inside a rocky mountain.”

  “For such an occasion?”

  “Just to save them from extinction. He didn’t think much of it, just saved them. The first Secret Ones were powerful sorcerers, always at war with great heroes, the founders of new tribes and nations.”

  “The Secret Ones have always been demons?”

  Oleg hesitated, looked sideways at the knight’s honest face, then turned away, replied reluctantly, as though forcing himself, “Wars would not last that long… neither would they begin that often if only one side were right. Have you rested?”

  “I need two or three years of it,” Thomas said in a miserable voice.

  “Stand up, Sir Thomas! Your beautiful Krizhina’s waiting. Beasts are slow-minded, but soon they’ll guess to fell that giant oak. Beavers would have already guessed that! Then they’ll drag it here and throw it across the water to reach the other bank.”

  Oleg rose, and Thomas, with a groan, got up on his trembling feet. Oleg watched him with admiration and sympathy; the knight had not taken the smallest iron piece off, carrying steadfastly the two poods of steel on himself and the heavy two-handed sword!

  “Why don’t they cross… as we did?” Thomas asked in a choking voice.

  “Born in a hot desert. The ancient one, so scorching that… They freeze here, Sir Thomas! Really freeze!”

  Thomas, who was dying of heat, sobbed of either exhaustion or envy for those animals that were cold, then dragged himself after the wonderer. They forced their way through shrubs, climbed up a long rocky slope, hurried across a steep hillside. Tired, Thomas kept bumping into huge boulders, his armor thundered, as if he were falling from the wall of a patrician house down onto the stone-paved street in Constantinople. He hissed with helpless rage, like a furious snake. “Where do we run?”

  “Save your breath!” The wonderer broke through the green thicket, held the branches for Thomas. He forgot that the knight’s armor was impenetrable even for sabers and spears, and the visor was down to save his eyes from sharp twigs. The ground was trembling beneath Thomas, as though it were one of the beasts running, about to jump on Oleg’s shoulders.

  Thomas breathed gruffly, like a winded horse, his lips oozed yellow foam. Stumbling at every step, he groped for the sword hilt and rattled out, “Sir… wonderer… I… stay…”

  “Run!”

  There was a sudden terrible roar behind them, then a heavy strike. The ground vibrated, they heard a rapid crackling of shrubs and trees. Oleg grabbed Thomas, dragged him on, pushing and kicking, through the thickset brush up the slope. “They’ve crossed!”

  “I shan’t…” Thomas forced out. “They’ll come up… I saw their paws… Better fight with honor… Face to face…”

  “If only you could! Swords do no harm to them!”

  “I’m a k-knight… Unworthy… like hare…”

  “Sir Thomas, fortify your heart! Run is courageous, and fight is cowardly!”

  Thomas did not get it; his head was pounding again. Beyond himself, urged on by the wonderer, he dragged his feet to the hill crest, long like a lizard. Far below, a column of red dust was driven by the wind along the broad road that curved round the hill’s foot. Across the road, there was a yellow wall of ripe wheat, and just under the hill on which the travelers stood half-dead, some pilgrims plodded in rows by two or three; ragged, half-naked or in torn cloaks, with heads shaved or overgrown with long hair. Three or four score in total. All the pilgrims looked miserable, but almost every one dragged a huge chain, fetters, or iron rings.

  “If you don’t want Krizhina to cry her eyes out, run to them!” Oleg breathed out in a parched voice.

  “But I don’t…” Thomas felt a strong shove on his back, made two steps involuntarily, lest
he fall, and was dragged on, as though by a rope. Trees and shrubs rushed to meet him, he moved his legs very quickly, in fear of ramming into a thick tree or stumbling over a stone. He clutched at branches as he ran, but adequate bushes seemed to be left behind and those he met were feeble, tearing easily, like rotten cloths, leaving green twigs in his hands. The twenty-three stone of his bone, muscle, and steel dashed down the slope like an avalanche. Stifled with heat and a flicker in his eyes, he began to dream of bumping into a tree, or even a boulder as tall as himself…

  The greenery finished abruptly, he darted in the dust. His legs failed to bear up the body that suddenly became heavier, the ground jumped to meet him, he clashed face to face with it, heard a crunch and a crackle, felt hot and salty in his mouth, as he rolled and finally sprawled in the hot dust.

  When he looked up madly, a shaggy old man was standing over him, with a spade-like beard, clad in a tattered cloak, all in patches and rents, an iron chain over his shoulder, each link the size of a hand, its end dragged in the road dust. “What a wonder is this?” the old man asked in a startled voice.

  Thomas set both hands on the ground, sat up with effort. He felt a stitch under his ribs, shook his head, trying to regain his senses.

  A heavy body rolled down swiftly from the steep slope, crushing through shrubs. Thomas heard a scream, “In the name of Great Rod! Of Christ, Buddha, Mahomet, Wotan and all the gods! Help!!!”

  Oleg jumped onto the road, with his eyes goggled madly, soaked and shaggy all over, like a mouse thrown ashore by the surf. The old man patted sedately his grey beard – luxuriant, though having burdocks and burrs – and shot a sharp glance from under his overhanging prickly eyebrows. “If we can… What’s the matter?”

  “We are chased!”

  “In this world someone is always chased. Come to ours.”

  “I was in it,” Oleg said quickly. His broad chest was heaving wildly, he kept glancing over his shoulder. “Now I’m in the Great Reclusion.”

  His fingers made a strange sign, so fast that Thomas could not see it, but the old man’s eyes widened. The pilgrim bowed his head – unwillingly, as Thomas spotted – and spoke in a different tone, “We recognize… But we are still in the Small Reclusion, which, as you know, prescribes us to leave mundane affairs behind.”

  “A special case!” Oleg cried. He glanced over again, with fright. A hollow rumble was heard; the ground was quivering.

  The old man spoke back sternly, in a rattling voice that seemed derisive to Thomas. “For you? Temptation has many faces, you know… We left mundane deeds behind.”

  A mighty roar came from behind the crest, then a crackle of broken shrubs. Big rocks flew down the slope onto the road, ahead of the monsters who’d brought them down.

  Thomas rose to his weak feet, drew out his sword and stood at the roadside. “Sir wonderer! Haven’t we fought when there were just the two of us?”

  Oleg cast an incensed look at the old man, behind whom the silent pilgrims stood in a dense crowd, their eyes dull and lackluster, their thin swarthy hands clutching thick staffs. The wind stirred their rags with disgust. Thomas smelt unwashed bodies, wrinkled his noble nose, and moved away to the very edge of the road.

  “Yes,” Oleg sighed. “Our last battle, Sir Thomas!” He pulled his huge sword out slowly, walked tiredly up to Thomas. The knight looked slantwise at his companion’s sad face. Not a hint of fear in it, only dead fatigue. Thomas felt proud that such a valiant friend was sent to him by the Holy Virgin. If they died, they’d be fighting to their last breath. Let Hell’s beasts be invincible, a true man wouldn’t give his life away that simply! One should fight, kick, and even bite as long as he can. Let Satan have no easy victory!

  The ground trembled. The green cover of the hill vanished, as the grey-green wave rolled over it. There was crackle and crash, stones dropped. What the monsters left behind, was black friable soil; no shrubs on it anymore, all twigs and even leaves gone, trampled into the ground along with the rocks.

  Thomas planted his feet wider apart, gave Oleg a cheering-up glance – the last one in that life! – gripped his sword with both hands. The monsters rushed down from the mountain, unstoppable. Only one of them spotted the knight’s gleaming figure on the way, mistook it for an iron pillar dug into the earth, tried to halt, setting its paws on the ground ahead, but was driven on down the slope, ripping it open as though with four giant ploughs.