Chapter 3

All the next day Thomas stood in the full blaze of the sun tied to a post in the middle of the yard. His clothes had been torn off. The servants laughed, threw leftovers at him. The burning Saracen sun was driving him mad. Bugs and flies swarmed his bleeding wounds, his eyes, nostrils and ears, fresh wales on his back. Thomas swore, then roared like a bull until his voice got hoarse, his head dropped on his chest. He could only moan then. His legs gave way, so he hung on the bounds that cut into his flesh tightly, making it blue.

Oleg hoped Thomas would be brought to the barn, but the night came and the poor knight was still not there. Tired stone-breakers gobbled their meal. Twice they fought near the food caldron for a slice of meat, then everyone collapsed on pitches of rotten hay. Soon Oleg heard snoring, rattling breath, groans of pain.

He listened to the sounds outside, approached the gate. Behind the oaken folds bound with thick iron bands, two soldiers had to be sitting all the night long. The Baron is severe, but are both of them really there?

Without looking at the chink between folds, where the iron bar could be seen, Oleg grabbed the edge with his left hand, his right one set against the crossbeam. He strained and started to lift the fold, his knuckles scraping against the stone gatepost. The massive hinges creaked faintly, the gate bar moved with a grind.

With his teeth gritted, he spare no effort in lifting the massive fold, his eyes kept on the glittering pole coming out slowly of the rusty hinges. The wooden edge almost touched the stone vault.

Suddenly, the pole slid out. Oleg hardly kept the fold in hands. Holding his breath, he put it down carefully and listened. The yard was quiet as the barn was: the heavy sleep had overcome exhausted slaves. As a breath of fresh night air came in through the wide slit, some of them tossed uneasily and groaned.

Oleg squeezed himself quietly between the stone wall and the fold taken off hinges. The broad courtyard looked empty. He heard horses snorting in distant stables, their hooves knocking on a wooden fence. In the moonlight he saw a tethering post in the middle of the yard.

The castle had its lights on. He caught a glimpse of a man’s figure, big and round-headed, against the curtain in the fourth, topmost floor. In the next window, a woman’s head was seen for a moment, her golden hair, lit by a torch from behind, looked ominously red until some long dark hands seized her white shoulders and pulled away. The silk curtains were drawn at once.

Oleg sneaked in the shadow along the wall. For a moment, it seemed to him that once he had been sneaking the same way, in the same rags, emaciated…

He waved unnecessary thoughts away, picked a stone, tossed it up to feel its weight, sides, roughness. The stone warden’s hut was dark ahead, a drowsy guard sat on the threshold. Oleg passed by him tip-toe and climbed the wall, clutching at the juts of rough stones.

On the top of the wall, he lay down, lest they see him against the stars, listened. Finally, he heard a faint rustle, as if a leather sole had shuffled on top of the wall in three or four steps. The sound was not repeated but Oleg had detected the shadowed guard by it. He took the stone out, weighed it in hand. He had never missed a mark in five steps before.

He ran tip-toe, making no more noise than a moon ray, and saw the guard better: big, broad-shouldered and young, in glittering helmet and mail with shimmering iron plates. He leaned on the wall drowsily, his eyes half-closed, but if he raised his head a bit, he would have looked in Oleg’s eyes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The troll raised the sword in right hand, his left one stretched aside, reaching the rails. Oleg hardly took his eyes off the glittering blade. The troll grinned: this time no way for his enemy to escape. Suddenly he tossed the sword to another hand. Oleg’s heart beat faster, but then he looked in the beast’s blazing eyes and realized: the troll has equal use of both arms, he plays with the sword to make his prey liven up for a moment, to plunge it into a deeper agony and terror afterwards.

The rails crackled under Oleg’s weight. He felt poles moving apart. A moment – and I’ll fall down in the cobbled yard. The troll won’t kill with a sword: he’d rather gnaw at his prey to feel warm salty blood on his lips, tear the flesh alive, while the prey writhes, twitches, pushes him away with weakening fingers…

Oleg was fingering a rough pole behind him, when his palm found the hilt of the knife. He flinched. How could he have forgotten it?

Trying to look petrified with fear, he pulled the knife out cautiously, gripped the handle. The troll made one more slow step, his gleaming red eyes almost burnt his prey through.

A crow cried harshly, flying above their heads. The troll shot a glance at it. His eyes returned to his prey at once, but Oleg had time to swing his hand: so fast that he saw only a blurry move himself. The troll gurgled as if he choked with wine, his eyes popped out. The knife was deep in his throat. His monstrous hairy paws convulsed, the sword slipped out, struck against the stone, bounced and stopped.

The troll seized the knife handle, lurched. Oleg saw the blade, dark with blood, in the huge hand, a hole in his throat, blood gushing out like a mountain stream, foaming and steaming in the moonlight. The troll staggered to Oleg, his hand with the knife advanced, his eyes blazing so brightly that Oleg saw nothing but those red fires.

Keeping his eye on the troll, Oleg picked the sword, jumped into the corner. For a moment they stood, devouring each other with eyes. Oleg raised the sword – heavy, sharp, with a curved blade. The troll reeled but kept walking, a knife in his hand stretched far forward. He was wild, wheezing, covered with blood.

Oleg did not strike – the troll collapsed at his feet, sprawled like a cut-down tree.

* * *

Thomas hung in his chains, feeble and half-conscious, when he heard the door bar click, then a soft whisper. “Sir Thomas! Don’t sock me on head!”

A familiar figure slipped in, setting the door ajar. Thomas jerked his head up, peered at the wonderer, hard to believe his eyes: Oleg had a sword on his belt and a knife in hand. He stopped in the middle of the torture chamber, giving his eyes time to accommodate to the fading light of the only torch. “Oh… You seem to have been socked.”

He approached, seized the hooks on which the tormented knight hung. The muscle on his shoulders bulged. Oleg sniffed, pulled – and the iron pin creaked out of the wall. Thomas could not believe his eyes, but the wonderer, breathing heavily near his left ear, tugged another pin – and Thomas was free.

The small room smelled of burning, the air was stiff. A wall was covered with hooks, pincers, saws, iron rods used to pierce a leg through, special tongs for tooth wrenching and lip ripping. The corner housed a small forge and a pile of firewood. Wincing, Thomas rubbed his swollen wrists. “Was there a guard?”

“He is there,” the wonderer said in a dull, almost sleepy voice. He did not seem to mind the thick iron ring chaffing his neck, the deeply curved writing on it, visible in the semi-dark, saying the slave belonged to Baron Otset. Oleg looked around the chamber sadly. A bunch of keys that had once been on the jailer’s belt jingled in his hand. “Can you walk?” he asked softly.

“My bones intact,” Thomas informed bitterly, with hope waking in his voice. “I’m burnt and beaten, that’s all. I only mind I didn’t hit back this time!” He snatched at his slave collar violently: that thing was burning him days and nights.

The wonderer glanced back at him from the door. Thomas followed him out, screwing of bright light: there were two torches lit in the passage. The wonderer glided along as a shadow. On the go, he threw the bunch of keys under a heavy gate with a wide stream of sewage running out from under it. There was a startled cry, a trample of bare feet.

“Runaway slaves there,” Thomas explained unnecessarily. “Did you know?”

“It’s the same everywhere. All the same…”

Thomas struggled to keep up but suddenly checked himself. “Wait! We won’t get out! At night, the yard is guarded by a troll. I don’t know where he came from…”

“You could have warned before,” the wonderer grumbled. “His watch has ended.”

Thomas sneaked after him, clutching at the wall. The answer puzzled him. He could barely keep up with Oleg: stiff legs obeyed reluctantly.

“Let’s go to stables,” the wonderer said. They stopped. “Your horse is there.”

“I can’t leave the cup!” Thomas replied, looking aside.

The wonderer shrugged indifferently. “Hurry then. The dawn is at hand.”

“And you?”

“I’ll move on my way with a prayer. Fights and bloodshed are not my business.”

The corridor curved. In twenty steps, there was a massive door to the courtyard. Beside it, a bulky soldier sat on a keg, his back rested on the wall. His helmet, iron plates on his shoulders and knees and the broad blade of his axe were gleaming red in the torchlight. Sometimes his red lips opened sleepily, but the guard stirred at once, cast a suspicious look around and got drowsy again. His black hair was shoulder-long. He had a thick leather armor under his iron plates, an axe across his laps, a gleaming shield leaned against the wall next to him.

Hiding in the shadow, they watched him. Thomas clenched and unclenched his fists. “If I got this bumpkin… But he’ll roar as a bull before I run up!”

With obvious displeasure on his face, the wonderer pulled his knife out, took by sharp point, as if to weigh it, then seized the handle. Thomas looked with confusion. The wonderer swung, with a sudden, brief and swift move of his hand. A faint lightning flashed in the smoky air along the corridor, died out at once. The sleeping guard stopped quivering, his head dropped, his chin set against the chest.

Thomas snatched the sword from the wonderer’s hand, rushed forward. The knife was stuck in the guard’s head beside ear, two thin dark trickles running down. Running, the wonderer pulled the knife out, picked the guard’s axe. He stopped at the door, wiped the bloody blade with a cloth. “We get out?”

Thomas hardly took his astonished eyes from the pilgrim’s pale face. “What?.. Ah! The armory must be on the right, sir wonderer.”

“Been there?”

“No. But if I were building…”

The armory door was in ten steps, guarded by two men. Thomas noticed that the wonderer clenched his fists powerlessly. Whispered something of no more killing, please, for we are all travelers in the night, or some nonsense like that.

The guard seated on a wooden block was dozing, his legs jerked. Another one was walking to and fro, yawning, rubbing his eyes with fists.

The sitting guard gave a loud snore, his legs stretched across the passage. Irritated, his partner intended to kick him, but the sleeping man looked like a bull, so the guard thought better and went away to the opposite wall, with a small guarded window in it. He jumped, grabbed the rods with both hands and pulled his face up to the fresh air jet.

“Day is breaking,” the guard said, then jumped down and turned. He saw a flash, a violent blow shook his body. Oleg caught him in his fall, put on the floor softly. He felt a draught, as Thomas galloped by like a horse. There was a thump, as if a log were axed.

Oleg flung the armory door open, glanced back at Thomas with reproach. The knight’s eyes glittered with joy. “Why kill him?” Oleg spoke sadly. “He’s no enemy.”

“And you?” Thomas wondered.

“Just stunned.”

“That’s why his brain splashed on the walls!”

The armory was a big room with low ceiling, full of trunks, chests, sabers, daggers and other weapons. Along the walls, there were shields, pieces of armor, and flexible lines of riveted steel, all lying in heaps. Small mail rings shimmered like fish, dusty helmets stood in a row like overturned pots.

Thomas rushed into the far corner, rummaged there avidly, scattering the pieces. “That’s my armor!” he whispered.

His hands were trembling, his blue eyes in tears. He hastened to pull the heavy steel on, his fingers slid off. “Sir wonderer,” he begged in a whisper. “Don’t take it as impudence… Please help me with clasps on my back! The knight’s trouble is that he sometimes can’t array himself in!”

In a moment, a half-naked stonemason with an angry face was concealed within the gleaming steel. The armor was fitting but the slave collar did not want to go inside, Thomas pushed it in with a fist. His blue eyes looked at Oleg through a narrow slit, the rest of his body covered with iron.

Thomas stooped easily – pieces of his armor slid apart in particular places to allow it – seized his triangle shield, snatched the cross-handled sword from the wall. “Forgive me, sir wonderer. Though you are not highborn, but not a servant either. I shouldn’t have asked you to clasp me, as if you were a squire…”

“Stop it,” the wonderer winced. “You’d better hurry. Do you hear it?”

There was a noise in the yard: clamor, furious barking of dogs, then a desperate squeal. “Slaves picked up the keys,” Oleg said. “So long messing about… Now start smashing and plundering all over. They’ll break into the wine cellar… and distract the guards.”

They hurried up the steep stairs, climbed on an open landing. It was dark below, the night ripped by torchlight, clang of steel and shouts of men, but the sky was lightening, stars fading. They felt a cool morning breeze.

They saw a watchtower on the left and the wall stretching along from it. In three or four steps, there was a lower wall fencing a corner off the yard. A guard in light armor was walking on the top of that wall, his cold hands under his arms, a sword and a knife on his belt. He cast uncaring glances below, where the torchlights rushed and men shouted.

Thomas cursed: the guard was unattainable on that side-by-side wall. The soldier raised his head and saw an armored knight and a half-naked man, lean but broad-shouldered, both with swords. His eyes popped out, his chest started rising, as he took in the air for a loud cry.

Thomas felt some hot thing rush past him. The next moment, he saw the wonderer pounce upon the guard: he had jumped legs first, and they crossed around the soldier’s neck with such strength that Thomas heard the crunch of broken bones. Both slid down the wall: the guard with his eyes popped and the half-naked man on his shoulders. At the last moment, the wonderer clutched at the wall edge. His legs came apart, and the limp dead body slipped down.

Thomas could hardly believe his eyes: he had never seen such a fight practice. He heard a faint slap below, as if a sack of wet linen were thrown down on the stone. The wonderer pulled himself up the wall, shook his fist at Thomas. “God damn you, knight! I don’t stop killing!”

“How’d you get back here?” Thomas cried anxiously.

“I’m not going to!” Oleg shouted back angrily. “I’m going to stables, to horses. And you want the Baron? His chambers are just beneath you!” He rushed along the wall to the stairs that led down into the yard.

Thomas came to his senses, chose the shortest cut, although dodging and twisting, built in such way as to help defend the castle. He ran by the inclined edge. Men in the yard below cried louder with joy, the torchlights rushed faster. He heard a crack of wood, a clang of steel.

A guard, as lanky as a milestone, stood half-asleep beside an ornate door. He raised a gleaming spear. Thomas crushed him with a brisk strike of gauntleted fist, thrust the door with his shoulder. The wood cracked, the massive bar flew off the hinges with an ear-grating screech of iron, the folds flung open.

Thomas broke into the ornate room as an avalanche. It was a bedroom, as large as a hall, with low vaults, lit by a huge fireplace that could have burnt a whole tree. A crooked old man was sitting beside the fire, throwing thick billets in it. In the middle of the room, a high bed stood, covered with a bright canopy and curtained by silk.

Running across the bedroom, Thomas tore the bed curtains away, then stopped and turned, his sword and shield ready for battle. On two puffy pillows of the luxurious bed, he saw two heads: one female, her golden hair lightened the room when Thomas had ripped the curtain away, and one male, black as a firebrand and big as a caldron.

The Baron slept, his mighty arms stretched over his head. He had a tiny forehead, overhanging brows, a short flattened nose with huge nostrils and a heavy back-slanted jaw. Thomas felt something odd in his face, but he had no time to think it over: the Baron turned in his sleep, his nails scratched the strong chest with black bestial hair. The blanket slipped down, and the nightgown on the golden-haired woman opened wide. Thomas started back, blurred by the tender whiteness of her skin. He had time to see her alabaster breast, perfect in shape, crowned with a bright red rose bud.

She woke up, her blue innocent eyes opened wide in astonishment, as well as her small coral mouth. Amazed, she looked in the eyes of the same blue that watched her through a narrow visor slit.

Thomas struggled to take his eyes off her. His fury, which had boiled up for all the days of his shameful captivity, nearly leaked down into some folds and cracks of his soul.

He grabbed the Baron’s naked shoulder, squeezed it with his gauntlet. “Get up! The Hell’s tired waiting.”

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 650