Chapter 34
Feeling something wrong, Thomas asked anxiously, “What? What’s happened?”
“I forgot to sprinkle my charms… Antes took them!”
Thomas sighed with sympathy, made a helpless gesture. “You slept like a log. You’d hardly wake up if they took you… I caught a glimpse of some ant feeling you but I thought you were exchanging some news. As you know their language a bit! And I was busy… Don’t grieve the loss of a woman – God will give a wench!”
“What wench?” Oleg asked in perplexity.
“You can make other charms. I can lend you my sword for it.”
“No, thanks.”
“Did you sanctify them in Jordan?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“What’s the matter then? The same wood makes icon and spade. I can fetch you the knottiest branch.”
Oleg glanced in the knight’s sympathetic face, shook his head. “Ready to leave your gold? I did not expect that. Thank you. Alas, I have no time to make new ones. If even I had, I’d have to get used to new charms. To learn from my own mistakes… And now even the smallest mistake can cost our lives.”
He scooped the formic acid from the kettle, sprinkled his hair with it, rubbed it into arms and legs. Thomas goggled his eyes. “What? What do you want, mad man?”
Oleg grinned sadly. “You guessed right. We’ll have to go into the burrow.”
Thomas jumped up, as though he sat on a poisonous snake. “To the antes?!”
“It was no badger who took them. Don’t worry, their holes are wide enough for me to get in.” He belted with the sword, clasped tightly.
Dumbfounded, Thomas watched him adjust the bow and quiver on his back, sprinkle them with formic acid. “Do you… mean it?” The knight was shaking with indignation.
“Certainly I do.”
Thomas spat, picked up his sword, spoke in rage. “Let no foe say I left my friend, even when he went mad… This heat can really melt any brain. Lead the way, sir wonderer!” He poured the rest of formic acid on himself, screwed up his nose at the poignant smell, tossed the kettle away uncaringly.
“Why are you throwing the kettle away?” Oleg reproached. “What will you cook in?”
“Going to get out alive?” Thomas wondered. “What mad by-chancers live in Rus’!”
“The main thing is to save your soul. And the body may be eaten.”
“Body does not matter,” Thomas agreed. “A knight consists of honor, glory, valor, and fidelity to his Lady!”
Oleg started to climb up quickly, resting his feet on gold bars. Thomas groaned as he saw the wonderer trampling roughly on the pure gold. Aside, there was a glaring flash of rainbow-colored sparkles, like a sunray refracted by a block of Venetian glass. Thomas gasped, squatted helplessly. Among the basalt, granite and golden nuggets, there was a diamond of the very first water, the size of a fist! Oleg glanced back with discontent, sighed and having climbed over the top of the rampart silently, started down the inner side.
Thomas felt a struggle inside, but his best friend vanished below, so he had to leave the diamond and other sparkling gems. He gave himself a strong vow to come back sometime and kick them all out from the ants’ rampart. Sapphires suit Krizhina very much, and emeralds will fit her little niece.
After the wonderer, he climbed down on the flat trampled ground. Neither a pebble nor a grass blade; everything smoothed and cleaned. The air was impregnated with a strong smell of formic acid. Black ants rush about swiftly, like knights on tourney, colliding in the same way, their armor cracks, but the ants run on as though nothing happened. Despite the early hour, some were carrying killed animals. Over the northern side of the rampart, there suddenly came dozens of big ants, each with a saiga, still or feebly fluttering, in their jaws; they must have encountered a big herd. Attracted by the exciting smell, scores of ants darted out a huge wide well and rushed swiftly to meet them.
Thomas and Oleg came to the dark gap, felt the cold and dampness of the grave from there. Some ants, as black as sin, emerged from the dark. They had big stones, still glistening from the ant saliva used to stick together sand, rocks, and gold nuggets, in their jaws. An ant carrying a saiga darted past Thomas, all but knocked him down into the well, crossed the brim deftly, and dashed down with a clatter of claws, like a squirrel on a tree.
“Each has six paws,” Thomas said in a shaky voice, “All hooked!” Oleg, with no word, sat down on the brim of the shaft, turned, and started his descent. Thomas crossed himself and followed his friend. “May you protect me, Our Lady! Though you have a baby to look after – and babies need a constant eye! – may you look at me, your true knight, at times! If I survive, I will bring to your altar some gold from that pile above.”
He climbed down hastily, clinging to ledges, ready to fall down into the fathomless well at any moment. His fingers got numb under the weight of iron armor, sweat poured over his eyes. He would have fallen long ago if not for his fear of knocking down the wonderer who was climbing below. Clawed legs rustled around, as ants darted by, like massive anvils with iron rods instead of legs, and vanished in the coal-black shade that crossed the well slantwise. Thomas did not dare to shake the biting drops of sweat off his face. A rock flew by, all but threw Thomas down. He listened, but the boulder disappeared in the shadow silently; neither a thud nor a splash nor a squeak there below.
The wonderer vanished in the dark. Thomas felt creepy, hurried up. Fortunately, ants never bothered to smooth the walls of their well, so there were enough ledges and hollows to rest hands and feet on. When he plunged into the shade himself, he saw a bifurcating tunnel in the wall. Surely, the wonderer picked the worst way.
He was descending for a long while. Probably he would have to crawl down to the very bottom and get on the turtle’s back – some say the Earth stands on three whales or even elephants – but the ants must have grown tired of digging straight or they may have mistaken, black fools, but soon Thomas was sliding down a steep slope, sometimes clinging to protruding stones; they were glued in too tightly to be torn out. If the builders of the Tower of David had ants helping them, crusaders would have never have destroyed its walls. Thomas admitted that honestly, as one should be unbiased even to enemies. After they are defeated, of course.
The long tunnel was going straight gradually. They were still descending, but Thomas took his hands off the wall; his iron gauntlet slid as though on a mirror! The ant saliva mortared the walls like the strongest glue, some stones protrude, stick out, but no way to take them out, only break half off and only if the stone is not wetted with saliva all over. On his way, Thomas tried to pick them with the point of his sword, but it left no scratch on the smooth surface.
Moreover, the saliva shone. Not as bright as torches, but brighter than the moss that gave light to Agathyrsians. However, if the ants were many millions of years older than people, they had enough time to invent some better lightning. People definitely should have done it in their place… No, ants can’t be that old. God created Man only eight thousand years ago and Man was first, while all sorts of animals and insects followed!
Thomas stumbled out of the blue, as he suddenly recalled the vague hints by Agathyrsians and even that demon whom he slew valiantly in Constantinople – hints of his wonderer friend’s having lived very long, almost eight thousand years, and each Christian knows firmly the only one to live eight thousand years on earth was the Devil, as God created him on the First Day, while separating the Light from the Dark…
Oleg glanced over impatiently. “Sir Thomas, wake up!”
“I just dreamed,” Thomas grumbled. “About the High.” He struggled to take himself in hand, though he had no wish to have filth in them and he felt really filthy after he dared to think those vile things about the man who had not only saved his life more than once – that was nothing! – but also had taken the cup with Christ’s blood in his hands more than once, which was allowed to no sinner and should have made Satan burn or at least burnt…
He kept bump
ing into Oleg’s back, hitting against protruding stones.
Oleg glanced back in vexation. “Sir Thomas!” he said angrily. “It’s not the place to sleep on the go! What if we were in search of your cup?”
Thomas made himself rouse. “But that’s the cup,” he muttered.
“And those are charms! They are no less important to me. At least now.”
Roused, Thomas found himself in a creepy underground passage faced with shining glass. It was sloping downwards and crossed by other holes, full of scary darting shadows, a resonant clatter of claws, a strong smell of formic acid. Thomas grasped that his valiant knightly soul had plunged into deep reflections, so unused to it, to avoid seeing all that horror; terrible monsters darting past him and his friend, who seemed more and more strange and dangerous, while all of them were in the godforsaken hellish depths of the earth!
The wonderer would always pick the broadest hole, though they could walk along narrow ones too if they bent, and the way downwards. It seemed to Thomas he also preferred the tunnels with the strongest reek of ants. They waded across a stream that ran out from one wall into the other. For a long while, they walked knee-deep in icy water, clean as crystal and bouncing on the glassy floor. Ants came running to it, always from the same side, took the water in quickly. Astonished and admiring, Thomas caught a glimpse of an ant pressing to the stream; his jaws went into the water, his mouth opened, he started lapping like a big thirsty dog, absorbing the water with force through a thick tube that went into his dry belly. The black rings moved apart, started to slide off each other. As his stomach was filling, a thin unprotected film showed between the rings. Thomas noticed the ant’s weak spot but that would only do to injure water carriers; ant soldiers would hardly march into battle with such paunches.
Ants with swollen bellies ran away into the dark, while Thomas followed the wonderer into even more fear; deeper and deeper, where it smelled stronger than any havoc of anthill. Even the ants they met there were strange. Above, all of their kin were the same: wiry, sun-tempered, black, fast, and evil. The ants below moved slowly – Thomas was kicked down only twice – had a smaller size and even smelled a bit different.
The tunnel suddenly led into a small cave, with three dark gaping holes level with the floor. Near one of them, there were two ants, bigger than any ones Thomas ever saw even on the surface, their long antennae moving. His heart was wrung with fear; the wonderer headed for that hole!
Thomas followed his friend, trembling and clinging close to him. As the ants saw them, they raised on all the six legs that glittered like metal. They had a menacing air. Sharp jaws moved apart, Thomas saw clearly the small shimmering teeth. Antennae and feelers explored the air, reached for the newcomers, but the ants made no move to come closer: watchful guards to the passage. “May we come back?” Thomas whispered. “Or into those other holes…”
“They are abandoned or empty,” Oleg replied without looking there. “And we need storerooms.”
Supple feelers darted to Oleg from both sides, started feeling, touching, pushing. The wonderer patted those thick antennae with hard brushes on ends, squeezed himself up to the entrance at once, cast a quick glance back, and Thomas saw his whitened face. He rushed after Oleg. There was a screech on his armor, but he broke through, as though it were a wall of shields, spears, and swords, uttered his battle cry habitually, gripped his sword hilt on the go, drew the blade out by half – and found himself running after the wonderer on the glassy floor, inside a broad pipe with no visible end.
Oleg jumped aside in time, should any monster attack him, as it looked to Thomas, and the monster, with menacing jaws apart, rushed on. Thomas, with his heart pounding in panics, grasped that the ants were simply running on their own business. Should one knock Thomas and Oleg down, that meant nothing; they often bumped into each other as well, so the crash of bony armors was heard constantly.
“They let you in?” he cried to Oleg’s back.
“By smell,” Oleg answered without looking back. “And also by a secret sign I gave them.”
Thomas felt his hair rising on its ends. “How… you know?”
“I’ve spotted it,” Oleg blurted impatiently. “While you admired the beauty of this place!”
Thomas blushed with shame so bitterly that felt his ears prickling, as though in a frosty wind. He, a man of war, overlooked the watchword of sentinels, while a man of religion, though a profoundly false one, spotted all of it and interpreted correctly! There seem to be some good things about Paganism. Not everything of it should be swept away, as cautious thinkers suggest. We may take some things from the past…
“We’re getting close,” Oleg said suddenly. “Take a hold of yourself, Sir Thomas.”
“A hold?” Thomas whispered in terror. “Are there more horrors ahead?”
They entered a cave that reeked of decay. Thomas held his nose, mended his pace, even left Oleg behind. There were white picked bones by the wall. Thomas caught a glimpse of them and turned away at once, quivering, his forehead almost hit against the wall that suddenly leapt out on him. He did not think the world ever had animals of such size!
When they came, by a broad passage, into the next cave, Thomas stiffened, unable to move. “Go along the wall,” Oleg advised comfortingly. “Pretend you are going to no church but tavern!”
In the dim light, strange and ghostly, as though cast by invisible moon, there was a slowly moving great dark mass of a two-headed hill, cracking and crunching heavily. As Thomas looked closer, he discerned pale legs, as long as tree trunks, with jagged shins, then thick bony shells and combs. There was a constant crash, as though a monstrous stone breaker was reducing huge blocks to road metal.
Oleg went along the wall carefully, avoiding the giant legs that scratched, twitched, tried to drag the headless bodies, many with their bellies torn out, their ovipositors pulled away. Most of the underground monsters were dead, but the half-dead ones demonstrated creepy vitality, still tried to crawl, climb, their hooked legs got hold of their neighbors.
“The monsters of underground?” Thomas asked in a thin voice that made him hate himself. “If these ones are here, I can imagine what things live in the very depth!”
“In the very depth… er… a giant turtle on which the earth stands. Or those are elephants? Or whales…”
“No, not that deep,” Thomas protested. “Why digging through? I don’t think even these ants of Herodotus could do it…”
“Do you think they could dig down to hell then?”
Thomas convulsed, as he imagined the tunnel they walked leading them straight into the cave with hot blazing fires, huge pots of boiling tar heating over, poor sinners sitting in them and screaming terribly… He’d rather not get there as that would be a predicament. The knightly codex says to help the offended, but those are sinners. Even the Holy Virgin did nothing to protect them, and he couldn’t be holier than she is.
Keeping his head busy with godly thought and whispering prayers, he squeezed himself after the wonderer into a cave so large that the previous one looked a doghouse against it. All the colossal space was covered with giant corpses of strange underground monsters, whitish and hairless. Their skin looked disgustingly soft, but their heads were terrible: armored with bony shells fitted tightly, with only a narrow slit for the eyes protected with a lowering thick plate, a huge mouth wide enough to swallow a horse.
Thomas wondered in fear why only the head was protected while the heart could be speared easily. It was seen through the translucent skin: huge, still pulsing feebly, vulnerable!
“Diggers of holes,” Oleg said suddenly, as though he read Thomas’s thoughts. “Head goes first and body’s dragged after, squeezing in the narrow passage. That’s why they are so soft, shapeless. And you are a brave knight! Even in this place you think your own thoughts.”
“Sir wonderer,” Thomas began, flattered by the praise, “could those Secret Seven have a hand in the theft of your charms?”
Oleg walked silent
for a long time. Finally, he shook his head. “Hardly. Antes do not obey them. All men, either secret or overt, are the same to ants. It appears to me that the Secret Seven lost our track… We vanished too suddenly when picked up by the Agathyrsians!”
“And then Agathyrsians took us on the face of earth far away,” Thomas muttered. “If they search the place we vanished at, combing through hills and dales, hamlets and villages, we will leave unspotted: I for Britain, you for the Rus’ of Herodotus…”
“I hope so,” Oleg replied, but he did not sound confident.
A forceful push on his thigh sent Thomas flying with thunder into a corner. Moaning, he got up, shook his fist after the ant running away. Once he rose, he was kicked down by another ant who carried a huge angular block in his jaws – or mandibles, as the wonderer kept calling them. Thomas followed the offender with his eyes, howled in double vexation: the saliva-glued block was all but wholly formed of sapphires. The smallest one was as large as a fist!
“Be patient,” a distant voice told him. “We’ll be there soon.”
“Do you know where charms are?”
“How can I?” Oleg sounded surprised. “We’ll have to rummage their storerooms!”
“Rummage…” Thomas moaned. “A needle in a haystack! You should have made your horses, dragons and other animals life-sized.”
He dragged along with the last of his strength, groaning, trying to keep in sight the broad back crossed with the long sword and the bow with quivers. The wonderer increased his pace, all but vanishing from sight, waited impatiently, then dashed along like mad again, extremely happy with his having no iron armor on. Once Thomas came up with him, saw the wonderer’s bare arms bleeding and covered with scratches and bruises; marks of his collisions with ants, so armor was no useless burden at all!
Thomas quickened his steps, bumped into Oleg. If he says, the knight thought nervously, we are walking in the mouth of a colossal animal – either sleeping or long dead or turned to stone – I shan’t be surprised. I’ll only thank Our Lady for the beast sleeping as long as possible. And once he rouses, let him and the antes kill each other in a struggle for power in the underground world and the last ant die of malice…
They came into a broad cave with walls of red quartz. Ants had only stuck the cracks in them with their saliva: just a glimmer of light, but their eyes had become completely accustomed by that time – Thomas was the first to notice huge chests along the wall. He gasped, his sight ran along the row, counted forty of them, large and larger. Each chest had an ancient symbol on its lid and sides – a big svarga, carved either in wood or metal. Thomas had seen the likes of it in his native land, left by the first settlers on the coast rocks. They say those signs once had been everywhere but the first missionaries of Christianity were the ones to destroy them zealously; burn clothes with the image of svarga, shatter jugs with it, trim it away from walls and shutters. And those chests, judging by the huge signs on the most prominent places, must have been left by ancient people! Old legends say they were extremely powerful…
Oleg jerked his head with irritation, passed along the whole row quickly. Thomas hobbled after him, moaning. “Sir wonderer!” he begged in a shaky voice near the last chest. “Just a look in!”
“Locked,” Oleg barked out without slowing his pace. “I don’t think ants could put the charms in there and lock them!”
“We’ll find your charms!” Thomas assured ardently. “But I’m so fascinated to see what the ancients put there! Just with half an eye!”
Oleg stopped near the last chest: the smallest one, it did not reach even to Thomas’s belt. The massive lid was so tight that not a single hair could pass into the slit, and the thick cramps were joined reliably with a paunchy padlock. Thomas turned it in excitement, got sweaty and, finally, begged in despair, “I know holy pilgrims are taught none of such things, but you are a Pagan pilgrim…”
Oleg took a grass blade out of his pocket, smoothed it carefully, tucked it into the dark keyhole. There was a click, the cramp suddenly got longer, hung released of the hinges, while the heavy padlock fell down on Thomas’s foot. The knight gave a shriek of pain and surprise, goggled his eyes. “How you did it?”
“Not me,” Oleg muttered. “Breaking grass! It’s Pagan.”
Thomas hesitated whether to accept help from Pagan magic potion for just a moment till his hands, as though they had their own will, gripped the lid, his feet took a firmer stand, and the bronze slab was lifted with no screech.
Thomas rose on tiptoe, the orange reflection from inside the chest fell on his face. The knight’s eyes widened, brows flew up. “Impossible…” he said in astonishment. “Who could gather that much?”
Oleg scooped a handful of gold coins. Their edges were uneven, he could only see a stern hook-nosed profile on the face side and a big svarga on the reverse. Other coins had a three-headed mountain, which resembled a trident, on them. Oleg recognized it, though with effort. The only mountain in Atlantis. It could be seen by sailors from far away, with the signal fires lit on its top at night and in bad weather. On the reverse, there were strange signs: prototypes of lines and cuts used in Rus’ up to the coming of Christianity…
Oleg went dark. He felt a heartache at recalling the men in black clothes who burnt books and writings on birch bark, destroyed the manuscripts written in lines and cuts, rubbed the local script and local culture off the face of Slavic lands in a hurry to set the other culture instead… “Seen enough of it?” Oleg asked harshly. “Let’s go!” Without waiting for the knight, he went to the exit of the cave quickly.
Thomas opened his mouth to protest, but the wonderer’s back was seen at the other end of the cave and something about his pace, his raised shoulders, gave the knight a hint that if he did not hurry he’d have to search the way out by himself. Oleg was furious, as he happened to be only very seldom. Whether Thomas was guilty or not, it was better for him to keep off the heat of the moment.
At breakneck pace, Thomas dashed after his friend, without even slamming the lid shut. Oleg had vanished from sight. Thomas hurried, his soul pounded with fear. He swore not to let Satan entice him with either gold or gems, as it is a shame for a Christian to yield where a benighted Pagan resisted… However, the Pagan may simply not know the true worth of treasures.
The great hall opened at once; Thomas had just darted from under the arch. His legs gave way. He felt crushed by the magnificence. The cave shone with green malachite. One of the walls was vertical, a great radiant throne towered near it. Three marble stairs led to the throne, and a huge golden svarga was glaring above it!
Thomas walked by the wonderer’s side, half a step behind. His heart thumped very fast. His feet stepped on the dented stairs, time-worn and scratched by sharp claws of all the ants who ran there for thousands of years.
The closer they came to the throne, the bigger it seemed. It must have been made for a man twenty or thirty feet tall, if human at all. Thomas gasped, nudged Oleg gently. On the right of the throne, a broad sword, three times as tall as a man, hung on a wall hook. The pendants on its wide handle were the size of a knight’s shield, the smallest of gems were as large as Thomas’s fist. “Were they giants,” Thomas asked, for some strange reason, in a whisper, “or heroes?”
Oleg looked around vacantly, waved it aside. “Forget it. We need charms, not golden trinkets!”
Suddenly. Thomas saw huge logs at the other end of the hall. It took him some time to grasp that they were clean-picked bones; human – if any man could be that tall – bones and skulls, as though the last guards of the underground palace remained forever! “Was that antes?” Thomas whispered even more apprehensively. “They gobbled them?”
“Sir Thomas, stop getting rubbish in your head!” Oleg replied with annoyance. “Killed by antes, by each other, or something else – why should we care? We need charms!”
“I see, I see,” Thomas said hastily and nodded with such ardor that it caused a dangerous crunch in his neck. “Once I got
my finger trapped in the door. At that moment, I didn’t care if all the world went to ruin…”
Oleg darted past the throne, into the dark passage that definitely had once been secret. Thomas rushed after him.