Chapter 7

As the road was going north, well-groomed fields were replaced by neglected, abandoned ones. Tall stone towers were seen more and more often: lit by blazing torches at night and bright reflected sunlight at daytime, as their guards exchanged signals with the help of mirrors.

Soon they saw a plundered village and, beyond it, the blackened ruins of the city that the wonderer had called Zolochev. The city wall was destroyed in two places, tall stone houses gaped with black holes of windows. Instead of roofs, they had white fresh-squared beams. Joined with cross-beams, they resembled picked skeletons of those monsters Thomas would hardly be able to forget until his death hour. Men bustled about. They whipped the survived horses, dragged logs and bricks, in some ant-like hurry to build their hill again.

“They also at war,” Oleg said sadly. “Forays, mutinies… Well, we ride farther to Saltov and part there. I’ll turn northeast, and you? Will you go back by the same road you took for Jerusalem?”

“I don’t remember it,” Thomas confessed. “Would noble knights who went to free the Holy Sepulcher bother with maps? We asked peasants and passers-by, and they pointed in the side where Jerusalem lies. That was how we went.”

“Oh, I see! You went with no calculations, not for plunder, but at the call of your heart. That’s why you made such a mess of things!”

“Which things?”

“Er… bones. In two days, after we pass Saltov, I shall turn onto the road across Steppes. And now the only way is straight.”

“Sir wonderer… It’s amazing but I’ve never had such a noble and worthy companion in my journey before! I have no brother, but when I come back to Britain, I’ll say I have!”

“Thanks,” Oleg replied awkwardly. He knew what it cost a noble knight to make such a confession to a common man. “Thank you, Sir Thomas.”

The nights were warm and so starry that the travelers had no need to make fire. However, twice they did it to dry their clothes after they got caught in a short bitter shower.

In one day’s ride before Saltov, they stopped for night in a beautiful cypress grove. Their horses stayed with them. The place looked like a wonderful garden, with well-groomed apple, pear, peach, and pomegranate trees in the middle of it. Oleg pointed at a heap of colossal stones and explained that some dozen years before there used to be a luxurious summer palace of a high lord, with a rich orchard and flower garden. Once there had been music and songs and children playing, but one could hardly survive that bloody time if he stayed far from thick city walls and their brutal garrisons.

Thomas insisted on his standing the night watch, as he was a man of battle and soldier’s duty, while sir wonderer was a private man and priest: though a great hero, but all the same a member of the respectable estate that needs protection. So he should sleep by the fire, while Thomas, a hero who stormed the Tower of David, would guard and feast his eyes on stars. Each the size a fist, unlike the stars in his homeland: no larger than snowflakes frozen on the pale northern sky!

Oleg went to sleep, laughing silently. The hardest time to stay awake is before dawn, and he was going to change the selfless knight then. And now let him watch the southern sky. He will hardly get out of his northern Land of White Wolves again soon… Or his Tin Isles… Britain… Saxon Anglia…

As Thomas sat by the fire, he sometimes tossed dry branches in it. With love and care, he moved the whetstone by the steel edge of the sword he had on his knees, fingered it from the sharp point to the cross-shaped handle. Fitted into the base of the hilt by the skilled armorer (who had also fixed Thomas’s breastplate and shoed his horse), there was the nail: red with Savior’s blood, its head flattened. The nail was crooked but wonder-working: every time Thomas thought of it, he felt a tremble in his body, then a burst of energy.

Slowly, he struck the rough stone along the sharp edge. His long sword could cut the iron handle of a mace or cleave a steel helmet, but the curved Saracen sabers he had encountered on the East could cut a pillow in two halves! A good Saracen saber was obliged to slash a light veil and a woman’s thinnest hair. To his shame, Thomas felt more and more love for the elegant Saracen weapons. His English sword seemed rough as a hammer in comparison with those.

He moved the whetstone carefully, brought the blade closer to fire to take a good look at it. There was a rustle. In a flash, Thomas recoiled from the fire, gripped the sword hilt, but his eyes were blinded by the blazing fire, bright sparkles floated before them in the dark. Tardily, he recalled the wonderer had never sat his vigil face to fire.

Someone struck his head, like an anvil, from behind. Hot fires blazed up in his eyes. Thomas rose, brandished his sword, but a heavy creature jumped on his back, struck again, and Thomas lapsed into the dark.

Through the pounding of blood in his ears, he heard voices. The dark sky dome with big stars was the same, the fire had burnt down a bit, crackling with coals. Dark figures emerged and vanished in the red semi-dark, iron clanged, shrubs snapped. He could see no horses but heard them snorting.

A gloomy face emerged from the dark to hang over Thomas, a broad face with prominent cheekbones. The man’s eyes, gleaming with excitement, examined his captive quickly. His lips moved apart, baring yellow dented teeth. “This safe… The other cost three ours, but we made it… D’you think we were paid fair?”

He was answered by a strange guttural voice from the dark. “First I thought we were overpaid! But now I’m not sure.”

“But we got them!”

“In sleep. What if they woke on time?”

The man stepped away from Thomas. “It’s done, anyway. But you’re right: we could demand more. Though they warned us… I’ve never seen such men before!”

Thomas stirred, checking the ropes. A sharp pain flared up in the back of his head, hammers went knocking in his temples. His hands were tied up with a thick rope tightly, neither could he move his feet. He heard a groan nearby, turned his head. A wish to die of shame filled him: the wonderer lay in three steps, naked to the waist, his blooded face pressed against the ground, his hands tied up on his back with several coils of a thick rope, as well as his feet. In the reddish firelight, his muscle seemed carved of dark wood.

A squat man emerged from darkness, his face oddly flat and yellow. He limped, his strong hands dangled on a level with knees. In his crooked fingers, which looked like roots of an old tree, he had clanging chains and iron bangles. With no word, only a crunch of joints, he sank beside Thomas, put the iron on his ankles and wrists, started riveting it. Thomas swore: that fool, blind in the dark, missed straight off and hammered his ankle. His leg was completely numb, swollen with the rope, but the dull ache in the bone echoed over his whole body.

The wonderer moaned, turned on his side. Thomas saw his face and closed his eyes tight at once, though he knew he’d see it branded on the inner side of his eyelids: the maimed, blooded face of his friend whom Thomas’s mistake betrayed into the hands of foes!

“Kite, send for master!” a husky voice said in the dark. “He pays rest, and we ride away. I don’t like it here.”

A hoarse laughter and malicious voice came from another side. “Stelmah has already run for him!.. He’s in a hurry. For good news, he’ll get two extra gold coins.”

“Damn him… We have no choice. Two of ours killed by that beast, though already tied up, one strangled by iron devil… A bit more – and they’d have killed all of us!”

I strangled him, Thomas grasped. When could I? As far as he recalled, the dark came at once. In his fall, he must have reached the enemy, pressed him down, and squeezed. Strangely, he still had armor on, while the wonderer was stripped off it. He’s worn the armor of Muromets for barely an hour. Not his fate to wear armor!

In the silent night, the trample of hooves rang out, approaching. Someone came rushing at full tilt. His horse neighed in fright when its bit was seized suddenly from the dark.

A complaisant hand tossed some dry twigs into the fire. It crackled, lit the small glade up. Thomas heard steps, then a hoarse voice constrained with rage and burning passion. “They!.. At last!”

A knight in light armor stood over Thomas, his legs wide apart. He was clad in mail, leather pants, and light boots, only his helmet was a heavy, knightly one: it covered all of his face, with only a narrow slit for eyes and tiny holes drilled in the metal on a level with mouth.

Thomas shuddered. Cold came into his limbs, filled them with lead. He peered into the narrow slit in fear, trying to see the eyes.

The other knight bent forward, shook his head. His voice was hoarse, scary. “You know me, Sir Thomas?”

“Sir Gorvel?” Thomas whispered. His voice broke, a tight lump blocked his throat.

The knight took his helmet with both hands, lifted it slowly. Thomas gave a cry and bit his lip, as he saw that corpse face: maimed and yellow, ugly scars coming down over each another. Thomas could see red gums and a row of teeth through the narrow hole in Gorvel’s left cheek. A white dry bone protruded from his trimmed right cheek. As though on a skeleton after crows had their feast upon it. His right socket, empty and crimson like the pharynx of the Hell’s stove, did not outstand much anymore on his fully disfigured face.

With effort, Gorvel stretched his lips, as white as worms, in a malevolent smile. “You know… And I see, you grasped what awaits you this time… before I cut off your head and fling it into a pot of boiling water!”

“Why?” Thomas whispered in a choking voice.

Gorvel put his helmet on slowly, in jerks, as though his sinews were damaged. His voice was muffled, but still full of towering malice. “To separate meat. I’ll make a spittoon of your skull!”

“Once you were civilized…” Thomas whispered. “Sir Gorvel, don’t flatter yourself. It was no fear that make me shudder. It was pity!”

With no word, Gorvel kicked Thomas’s face with his boot. Thomas spat out a clot of blood, which hung by the soft top of foe’s boot. Gorvel kicked him again, targeting his smashed lips, but hit on the cheekbone. Blood went running down in an oblique trickle.

“To barn,” Gorvel commanded. His voice was as shaky as epileptic’s. “There’s a good one made of logs, beyond the orchard. I’ll be back in a couple of hours and kill them. But first I want to make sure the cup in his bag is that one!”

The flat-faced man who was called Kite objected with heat, “To barn? It’s beyond us to keep them there for two hours, even tied up. The two of them will smash every barn, should it be from the biggest stones, not to mention logs. It’s not what we agreed on! They need to be watched even if tied, even if chained! Watched each by ten men. And even then…”

Gorvel wheeled round abruptly, his only eye blazed fiercely through the narrow slit. For a minute they watched each other without taking their eyes off, then Gorvel said, “You are right, rascal! I forgot how they escaped last time, how many men killed… Get them on horses, take to the waterfall. We’ll behead them there and hurl their bodies to fish. And now I shall take the cup to the master.”

Two men yanked Thomas up roughly, took the rope off his feet and looped it around his neck before making him sit ahorse. The other end of the rope was looped around Oleg’s neck: the wonderer was put on another horse. If Thomas fell down, the horse would drag him and strangle quickly, and Oleg would also be dragged off and strangled. Thomas grew cold. “Don’t you see the cup is the same?” he asked hastily.

Gorvel jerked his head. His voice was spiteful. “Do you think I looked into the bag last time? I’m not superstitious, but progressists avoid unnecessary risk. Let others check whether it can do any harm or not.”

Kite and another hireling helped Gorvel up into the saddle. Fiercely, Gorvel raised the horse to its hind legs, as though taking a revenge for his visible weakness caused by severe injury, yelled, and both vanished in the dark, with only an abrupt clatter of hooves.

“Peter, Paul,” Kite called harshly, “let’s go! Keep an eye on them. I don’t trust them even with loops on their necks.”

The two hirelings named by Kite got their horses going. The small caravan dragged itself through the night slowly. Kite would ride ahead to see the way, come back hastily, check the ropes on the hands of captives, touch the horsehair loops on their necks.

They turned left off the road and rode for a long time. Finally, Kite reined up. Thomas saw a predatory glitter of his eyes in the moonlight. “There! Look at the wide world, you knight!”

“Is it white?” Thomas asked arrogantly. “You must be blind, fool. It’s the black of night.”

Kite’s smile went broader. “I love brave men.”

They stood near the dark wall of the forest. A dull roar of waterfall was heard aside, a blow of cold coming from there. In the silvery moonlight, there was a vague outline of the rocky steep with a cloud of water spray over it.

The captives were dragged off the horses. Oleg still looked stunned. Thomas took in the place with a desperate glance, noticed a luxuriant oak grove, of old oaks with spreading branches, a birch forest on the left, and a thick hazel grove on the other side of the glade. As Thomas’s eyes got accustomed to the moonlight, he discerned ripe hazel nuts. For some strange reason, that was the bitterest stitch at his heart. I’ll never crack nuts again and those villains, that human filth, will have more of the juicy kernels!

“Here’s the end of your life,” Kite explained. “A beautiful place. Even a waterfall, which is rare in this land!.. Pity you are no Pagan. Christians don’t mind such things, but Pagans like to die in beautiful places and beautiful poses. First we’ll cut off your heads, yours and you wild friend’s, then hurl them to fish. Should some piece be thrown ashore, it would be smaller than a little finger!”

“The master might see it in a different way,” another hireling, Paul, warned him.

Peter, the third one, burst with stupid laughter. Kite shook his head with regret. “They must have been a real plague… Were it you to scratch him?.. Well, never mind.” He shoved Thomas. The knight fell on his back and tied hands, numb fingers crunched painfully.

At once, Peter was over the knight, his saber bare, but his voice comforting. “We’d have finished you straight off, but the order is different. Don’t be afraid. We’ll kill you, but with no torture.”

Thomas sat up with effort. “I don’t blame you,” he said haughtily. “You are common villains. But no excuse for Sir Gorvel for mixing with you. He is a noble man, after all!”

Kite exchanged glances with his hirelings and laughed. “Noble man? We are innocent lambs before your Sir Gorvel! When he crosses a desert, snakes creep away in fear of his venom, vultures flee and jackals run: they have nothing to do where Gorvel comes! Did you see him different? Though I doubt whether he could be different… Well, knight, have your rest.”

Thomas leaned his back against a big boulder. “Thank you,” he replied arrogantly. “The Holy Virgin in her mercy created this stone beforehand, for me to sit with comfort.”

“Excellent! And you, foreign pilgrim, sit next to him,” Kite suggested merrily.

Oleg rested his back against a granite rock in three steps away. It was all prominent stones and juts. His head drooped helplessly on his chest, blood dripped slowly on his knees. As he heard Kite, he tossed his head, looked with lackluster eyes. “Thank you. I have more comfort here.”

“Which comfort?” Kite asked suspiciously.

“Don’t you see? I was up for two nights, and it keeps me awake now. If these are my last minutes, I’d like to see the world. Sir knight knows I am Pagan.”

Kite looked at Peter with inquiry. The hireling nodded. “He had no cross on!”

Kite waved his hand uncaringly. “No breath is enough before death… Well, stay where you like. Hey, Peter, Paul! Keep your eyes on them! Is it clear?”

“As clear as it can,” Peter grumbled. “We keep our hands on them.”

Both sat before Thomas, their swords on their knees. In times they glanced at Oleg who was all but behind them, but the barbarian looked completely exhausted, covered with blood, and the rope on his hands, which were behind him, would do to keep an elephant. Besides, Kite had recalled the three killed men and ordered to tie the barbarian’s feet up tighter.

Thomas sat, resting against the boulder, his back straightened up: he did not want them to think he’d lost heart before death. His eyes looked arrogantly over the heads of hirelings. “Kite, this iron bone is too calm,” Paul said nervously at last. “His even snuffs burn holes in my stomach! Let’s finish them off and throw into waterfall.”

“And the master?”

“Tell him truth. Or you think he won’t pay us then?”

“He’ll claim we allowed them to slip out. He seems to have been scared in no small way before.”

Paul squatted down before Thomas, waved the end of his saber before the eyes of the arrogant knight. “Stop grinning!”

“Stop trembling, you!” Kite told him harshly, with contempt. “He’s a noble knight. Blue blood! Has cold feet, but keeps his arrogance. It’s their noble way. You are a fool to take it at face value.”

Paul squirmed, glanced at Kite with suspicion. “Why to feign?”

“Dunno,” Kite replied with a venomous smile, “it’s the way of nobles. But if you quake with fear still, then watch them closely. And you, Peter!”

“I’m watching,” Peter assured gloomily. “I saw how this iron bone snatched Nitwit. Squeezed once, and no whole bone left! And his heart slid out through his throat…”

Kite and Paul exchanged nervous glances, then glared at Thomas.

Well done me, Thomas thought. Lost consciousness, but kept my knightly grip. Pity I can recall none of it.

Kite was sitting before him. Black eyes glittered on his flat face, as they reflected the cold stars. He kept his saber in hand. In times, he would touch the sharp point with the nail of his thumb, as Thomas had done not so long before.

Shame drove hot blood to the knight’s face again. He uttered a muffled groan, made himself toss his head arrogantly and look over the heads of contemptible hirelings. The wonderer sat in three or four steps behind Kite and Paul, his face miserable, in dark stripes of dry blood. He moved his shoulders a bit closer, raised himself with effort, started to squirm nervously, as though scratching his back against the rock. Thomas watched him with perplexity: the wonderer seemed no coward, he’d proved his boldness more than once, but he was evidently nervous now, wriggling with fear – no warrior, after all, just a very strong man who had a good luck…

Suddenly Thomas felt a new wave of hot blood rush up to his cheeks. He winked with shame, all but cried. Shame on the noble knight who thought of the courageous pilgrim in the way he did! Oleg must have chosen that bad place just because he resolved at once to try to fray through the rope on his hands!

“You are all cowards,” Thomas spoke as mysteriously as he could. “I still have a chance to destroy you.”

Kite’s fingers took a firmer grip on the saber hilt. Peter and Paul rushed to feel the rope on his feet at once, and the collision of their heads lit the night with sparks. “Which chance?” Kite demanded.

“You will know,” Thomas told him slowly, keeping eyes on him, then looked at his tied feet. The three hirelings stared there too.

Paul went pale. Peter recoiled. Kite gritted his teeth, slapped Thomas on his face with all his might. “Now?.. You may scare these fools, but I’m a different sort!”

“Are you?” Thomas doubted. His smashed lips bled, but he got their eyes fixed on him. None of the three could see the desperate efforts of the wonderer. Oleg looked sullen and dulled, his face mostly hid in the shade, but something about him made Thomas hope.

The wonderer squirmed up and down, as though taking very deep breath. Thomas stiffened, bit his lip in fear and felt the salty taste of blood: a dark stripe came out from behind the wonderer’s back and went down slowly. It was a bit darker than the rocks and dry ground. Thomas could see it only because he was peering intently.

Thomas’s heart ached with fear and pity: the wonderer had cut his hands severely against the stone ledge, trying to fray the rope through. The pool of blood was growing, spreading around, as though he had cut large blood vessels!

For a moment, Thomas thought the wonderer decided to take his own life, not to let the despicable killers take it. But he was no noble man – a Pagan barbarian, and that sort would struggle for life till their last sigh, the last drop of blood and even longer. When Devil drags their souls to Hell, they must be biting him as fiercely as they can…

“I know what I say,” Thomas told them significantly. He raised his voice, to prevent them from taking eyes off him. “Do you think I learnt nothing? On all the long way from my northern land over two seas to the torrid Jerusalem? When I took the Tower of David from infidels by storm? When I climbed the tall walls of Jerusalem?.. And the sudden attacks of Saracen riders on their horses, as fast as the simoom of deserts! And their assassins! You are no more than blind kittens against them!”

In a loud voice, he began to tell stories of the triumphant campaign of Christ’s host. The hirelings listened, their eyes fixed on him. Professional killers, they had thus never been outside their country, saw neither hotter nor colder lands, nor even the sea. Too busy to travel. Restless times give more work to killers than to farmers or carpenters.

Suddenly Paul, the most suspicious one of the three, stirred anxiously. “It seems to me he chatters on some purpose!” His voice gave a quaver.

Peter laughed with light heart. “Of course he does! It helps him not to think of what awaits him.”

“No. There’s something maturing in his dome…”

“Soon the dome breaks and you see all of it,” Peter comforted. “Come on, iron bone! Come on!”

Thomas opened his mouth, but there came a trample of horse hooves in the dark. Kite took his bow and arrows, Peter and Paul – their sabers, the three of them stretched their necks to look over Thomas’s head. At last, Kite said with relief, “The master’s horse!.. Well, knight, the time’s coming.”

A rider became visible against the starry sky, his head and shoulders a strange gleam in the moonlight, as if he were covered with hoarfrost. His horse snorted, as it heard other horses, gave a soft neigh. Kite rushed to meet Gorvel with servility, helped him to dismount. Then one more rider emerged, on a small shaggy horse. Thomas grasped it was Stelmah.

Gorvel hobbled quickly up to the place where Thomas sat in his ties, shot a brief glance, through the narrow slit, at the motionless wonderer who seemed unconscious, his head dropped on the blooded chest, and turned again to the gleaming knight at once. “All in place?.. I rushed like a genie! Got afraid that some filth will interfere and spoil all of it. That’s no knight but a devil himself!”

“We coped with devils too,” Kite assured.

Gorvel limped up, stopped before Thomas. His only eye glittered in the moonlight through the slit, like a piece of ice. Thomas could see clearly a red socket in place of another eye. It looks like the Hell’s stove where this man is doomed to be burning forever.

Thomas replied with a straight look that showed his unsullied knightly pride, arrogance, and noble haughtiness. Gorvel spoke slowly, his breath still fast after a mad gallop. “What would you say now, Sir Thomas?”

“That I shall ride on and you stay here,” Thomas replied in a voice of a noble-born speaking to a stableman.

Gorvel recoiled, his hand gripped the sword. He glanced back at Kite and his companions with suspicion.

Kite advanced his palms, protesting. “It’s all right! Knights are all thick-headed. He can be brought to reason only by spear in his heart. Or his brain splashed around by battleax.”

“Then we’ll bring him to reason!” Gorvel said in a dull voice. “Or splash around?”

He drew out his sword: not knightly, as Thomas spotted, but a short and light one, as his maimed hand was no longer able to hold his previous heavy sword. Unwinking, Thomas looked at the steel mask that hung over him. The pity he felt for the half-man disappeared. The look of his blue eyes that seemed dark in the moonlight was straight and clear as always.

Gorvel’s voice thrashed in the iron box of his helmet, like a scary bat seeking a way out, darting from one side to another, scratching the iron with sharp claws. “You are the hero of the storm of the Tower of David, you released the Holy Sepulcher!.. You know prayers. You have to. Though I never heard you saying any but the name of Our Lady or swearing with clerical words. But now I want to hear a true prayer of you!”

“A true prayer will plunge you deeper into the Hell,” Thomas replied. “Don’t you fear a retribution from God?”

“We will all burn in Hell,” Gorvel snapped. “Not only me.”

Thomas saw in the dark that the rope on the wonderer’s body suddenly got weak. It had been stretched so tightly that it burst with a terrible crash, a crack like the one made by a shepherd’s whip. Everyone should have turned there, rush to him with sabers. Thomas’s heart got bleeding, but all the five of them, including Stelmah (he had come closer), were peering intently in the knight’s furious face. Thomas realized they heard no noises but the roar of close waterfall and the heavy breath of Gorvel.

“I’ll say more,” Gorvel’s voice roared in the steel tower of his helmet. “You will live just as long as your prayer lasts! But pray loudly, for us to hear every word.”

Behind them, the wonderer lifted his hands slowly. The fragments of ropes were still on them, dark blood dripped on the ground. His face was twisted with pain, his eyes two dark holes.

“Do it!” Gorvel demanded fiercely. He pressed the sword hilt a bit, the blade cut the skin on Thomas’s throat. Thomas felt a hot thin trickle running down. Strangely, it brought him relief. The wonderer is not the only to bleed!

“That’s a knight!” Kite said in vexation. “Proud. No prayer of him.”

“Why not? We’ll have it,” Gorvel assured. “But I suspect he, though swearing with the name of Holy Virgin at every step, knows no prayers at all.”

Paul made a wary move closer to them, his eyes fixed on the dark stripe of blood on the knight’s throat. “Getting to prayer now for him is the same as begging mercy,” he supposed. “These are Franks. They only pray to their god because he doesn’t exist really – no one ever saw him!”

Behind them, the wonderer stooped, his numb fingers undid the tight knots on his feet. Slowly, he got up, reeled on his stiffened legs.

Gorvel and Kite kept their eyes on the pallid knight’s throat. At last, Gorvel brought his sword away. His fingers took a stronger grip on the hilt, his voice from the iron cage sounded full of violent rage. “Then go to your stupid paradise, you miserable! And I’ll stay on earth. I swear I will steal Krizhina, the girl who you dreamed of even before the storm of the Tower of David. I shall be laughing at you, while I and she…”

“False comfort,” Thomas interrupted proudly. “She will never want even to wipe her feet on you.”

Gorvel raised the glittering blade of his sword overhead. He took a deep breath, engraving in his memory the sweet moment of the last blow that would break his foe’s head apart, like a rotten nut shell, splash his brain within dozens of steps around…

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 510