Chapter 18

The wonderer was asleep so fast that could hardly be awaken not only by dinner but by supper. Well if he wakes at dawn… Thomas sighed, took the dagger. The plates beneath him were moving, coming close, rubbing against each other creepily. Once their collision made a bony splinter to flew apart and hurt his cheek bleeding. He touched the scratch, asked Our Lady in a whisper to leave that small scar be. Later, back in Britain, he would swear on the Holy Book, the Nail of the Cross of the Lord and anything else they would offer him that he got that wound from a dragon as large as a mountain!

Obeying the prick, dragon turned northwest, and Thomas stiffened of waiting again. Gradually, he accustomed himself to glance down. Though his soul would froze with bodily fear each time, he could watch the migrating masses of mounted hosts, countless herds. Sometimes he spotted white tents: Polovtsians build no cities, as the wonderer had told him, only ruin and destroy the cities of others, live in yurts and covered wagons. They cross streams on the go and wade across large rivers. Only once Thomas saw them swimming across a broad river: the water was scattered with the points of swimmers, with many rafts of logs and clusters of empty leather skins tied together among them.

Far below the dragon’s belly, rives and groves floated by. As close Thomas peered, he could see not a single city, either big or small, no village, no hamlet, not even a tiny settlement of one or two houses: only hooded carts of nomads surrounded by numerous herds of cattle and horses.

At noon Thomas woke the wonderer up gloatingly, as he had asked for it. Almost at the same time, the dragon had a wish to eat, and the half-awake wonderer together with the knight flung fat slices of meat hastily into the red furnace. The dragon kept chewing. Finally, he turned away, but then decided to fill up the cheek pouch on the other side. Thomas pretended not to notice it, the wonderer threw bleeding slices up alone, then wiped his hands for a long time on the lifted comb that looked like a tall bony fence of sharp stakes.

By evening Oleg made the dragon descend. They landed on the bank of a narrow river that ran jumping on stones, its bed cut in the crumbling rocks, so unusual in the steppes, as flat as an endless table.

That time Thomas jumped off a moment before the huge wings folded with a thundering sound on the back, pressing down the bristled comb. He rolled over head, his iron clanging, all but ran into own sword. The wonderer followed the dragon who lay down on the bank and lapped the water greedily. Oleg shook out meat from two sacks near the awful snout.

Thomas limped into shrubs to gather brushwood, as the sun was sinking to the horizon. When he came back with a first armful, a tiny fire already burnt on the bank: the wonderer lit it on dry grass blades and wooden splinters washed ashore by waves. In hundred steps upstream, there were loud splashes, hits on water, as though the river was battered with logs. The dragon, after having gobbled half of the meat and thrown the rest around swinishly, sat up to his belly in the water, almost blocking the river, his outspread wings bent by the current. The seething water ran over wings and paws, with spikes looking out of the foam, like sharp pales in the city wall. The dragon bowed down to the very water, peered very closely in, holding his breath, then suddenly stroke with both paws, raising a cloud of spray. Thomas dropped dry twigs with a crash, glancing apprehensively at the strange animal. “What’s he doing?”

“Fishing,” Oleg muttered.

“Are you jesting?.. Fish to him is small like flies to you.”

“Or you,” Oleg parried. “Do you only hunt for food? Or for the joy of it too?.. Dragon has a pleasure to recall his childhood. When he was small, he lived in water… Fish was a match to him then. A match or bigger.”

The dragon jumped with squeaks. His fat bottom twitched, prominent frog eyes flashed. His forepaws were groping under the water, his claws so wide apart and out at full length that it all but made Thomas’s legs give way, and own armor seemed to the knight no thicker than maple leaves. “Probably,” Oleg said, thinking of some other matters, “he is small still… Dragons live for thousands of years. The one two hundred years old is a teenager…”

The teenager, with a terrible scream that made the banks tremble, was pulling out of the water some fluttering log with fins, Oleg hardly recognized a sheatfish in it. Backing, the dragon stepped on his own tail and fell but kept the sheatfish, floundered with it in the water for a while, raising clouds of spray and shaking the ground, flung it hastily far away on the bank and rushed to the river again. He bustled about, with a passion of hunting, plunged his head into the water up to the ears, peering at the rocky bottom, and when a strong wave rolled overhead he did not recoiled in fear but plunged deeper in excitement: only his spread comb and fat bottom remained over the water.

Twice he threw on the bank a hundred-year-old pike, which looked like a green mossy drowned log, while the miraculous sheatfish, a giant Oleg had never seen before, was writhing heavily, bending, sliding gradually down the slope to the water. The dragon jumped fussily, spanked with giant paws, trying to claw the prey, snatched it with jaws. Meanwhile, the sheatfish, feeling the water close, bent his body twice with its last strength and its tail, forked like a mermaid’s, touched the water. The sheatfish leapt in the air, plopped down into the shallow water, and crawled on, winding his body and leaving a deep trench, which was buried with sand immediately. The sheatfish was getting deeper with every moment. Finally, the wave was cut by a dorsal fin, which looked like a small dragon’s comb. It darted to the middle of the river and vanished.

“Fool,” Oleg grumbled. He fingered his charms, casting vacant glances at the dragon’s comb spread with excitement. “His pikes are also creeping to water… What an offended roar he will make!”

“May I keep the pikes?” Thomas said anxiously, but Oleg heard sympathy in the knight’s voice too. “We’ll need less meat for him.”

“Keep them,” Oleg growled. His eyes were vacant, he kept fingering charms, his lips moved, whispering either prayers or spells.

Thomas rushed to the fishing spot, not afraid of the wet dragon: no savage beast anymore but a fervent fisher whom the knight could understand as he was one himself. With effort, he dragged the heavy pikes far from the water. Wet and covered with slime, they writhed fervently, snapped with toothy jaws. Thomas had a hard time helping the luckless fisher: the pikes turned out to be tenacious of life, though both had marks of claws on their heads. When he tried to grab the first one by tail (it was dangerous to seize by gills a creature with crocodile jaws and inch-long teeth), the pike’s mighty jerk threw him down on the ground, with an iron thunder, the wet sand mixed with fish slime hurled into his eyes. Swearing like a Templar, he stunned both with his iron fists, finishing the dragon’s work, dragged them on the dry as far as he could.

The dragon got out, put his paws apart, shook himself like a dog. Crayfish and pebbles flew in all directions, along with clouds of sand and water. He had the third pike clenched in teeth. He trotted on the bank merrily, a mischievous glitter in his eyes, even the mails on his snout a bit apart. As he spotted Thomas dragging a pike away by tail, he stopped abruptly. The lower jaw dropped, the fresh-caught pike plopped wetly down on the ground, leapt twice, splashed into the shallow water near the bank, its body bent forcefully once more and darted into the depth.

Thomas dropped his pike, cowered low of the terrible roar. The dragon yelled, making the ground tremble, trees bend, and leaves fall on the ground as though from shaken branches. His eyes got creepy and bloodshot, the huge comb reared from the withers to the tip of his tail.

The wonderer glanced back at the roar. “What’s up him?” Thomas cried to him in fear.

“Where did you put sheatfish?” Oleg cried back.

“He thinks I ate it?”

Oleg stood up, cupped his hand at his forehead. “Where’s it then?”

“I didn’t touch it at all!” Thomas shouted in fury.

Oleg watched him with great doubt. “And where were you dragging that pike?”

Suddenly the dragon rushed forward, in short, fussy jumps. His eyes were fixed on Thomas, jaws started to open, with a glitter of teeth. Thomas stood as though enchanted, watching the horrible beast coming on him, when a desperate scream cut his ears, “To the cleft! The cleft near you! On the left!!!”

Obeying, Thomas jumped to the left, over a fat pike, fell into the cleft, rolled away from the entrance. At once it went dark, the rock trembled of a heavy blow, the awful roar of frantic dragon slashed his ears. The beast tried to shove his snout into the narrow slit, bellowed of disappointment. Thomas clung fast into the corner, out of his strength, gasping for air the stink of dragon’s breath, his head cracking of the terrible roar.

When the dragon fell silent for a moment, drawing in the air for next scream, Thomas jerked his head up, looked around. He was trapped, no other way out. The dragon gave a dreadful roar, tried to put his paw into the cleft. Thomas felt his hair stirring under the helmet, as the monstrous claws scratched the stone floor in just a step. Somehow the dragon managed a turn, his claws all but reached the knight. Thomas flattened himself on the wall, watching with terror the paw scratching stone in two inches from his leg. He glanced back in despair, but that cave was a solid stone hollowed out: no chink for a mouse to get in or out!

When Thomas could not anymore discern whether it was dark of the beast’s body screening the light or the starry night sky, he tried a look out. He barely had time to recoil: the monstrous paw covered the cleft immediately, pebbles crunched on the diamond-hard claws. The horrible animal kept guarding his prey!

He heard steps, then the wonderer’s sleepy, yawning voice. “Is that you, Sir Thomas?.. Sleep if you must. Let dragon cool down. Don’t re-open his sores.”

“Sir wonderer!” Thomas cried nervously. “I give the word of noble knight’s honor: I didn’t touch that sheatfish!”

The dragon growled menacingly on the other side of the cleft. A monstrous paw screened the stars, hit on the crevice with a thunder. Small pebbles rang on the knight’s armor. Thomas recoiled.

He heard the wonderer’s voice, peaceful and comforting. “I believe you, actually… Though the sheatfish did disappear…”

“You think,” Thomas cried in terror, “I ate that rotten sheatfish?”

“Sir Thomas!”

“Well, no rotten, I was carried too far about it… But I am a paladin of Crusade, noble Sir Malton…”

“In the excitement of hunting… er… A noble passion… But I said nothing of you having eaten it. Though both of us, dragon and I, saw you stealing the pike.”

“Stealing?”

“Everyone has his weaknesses, sir knight. Everyone is sinful, God forgive them. And the dragon… he will forget if not forgive.”

“Forget?”

“Dragons have memory like a sieve,” Oleg explained. The dragon’s roaring was all the softer, as though he tried to fathom the meaning of human words or the wonderer scratched him behind ears. “In the morning he can’t recall the day before. So he’ll forget you making off with his sheatfish.”

“I didn’t touch it!”

“Er… he, as well as I, saw you dragging away his pike. Probably he has seen even more of it. We Rodians consider it a sin to deceive even a beast, but you Christians have nothing in the way it’s supposed to be…”

He heard the wonderer settling by the distant fire, which crackled with coals in silence. Lately, Thomas recalled the wonderer, though immersed in his deep thoughts, could have seen the sheatfish getting into the river by itself. Oleg had even advised him, Thomas Malton, to save pikes for that ungrateful fool! But now the wonderer could hardly be reached by Thomas’s cries: he slept like a log, while the dragon breathed evenly at hand, as though a heavy tide coasting in: it only filled the cave not with fresh sea breeze but with a heavy smell of rotting meat stuck in dragon’s teeth. Thomas could see not a single star: the beast leaned his side on the cleft, blocking the way out even in his sleep.

Slowly, Thomas slid down the wall on the floor, trying not to ring his armor. The dragon’s snoring was even and mighty. Unwittingly, Thomas lapsed into a short and troubled dream, as he thought it to be.

Thomas woke of the bright sun shooting its fiery arrows straight in his eyes. He heard splashes, roaring, mighty slapping on water from outside his small cave.

Slowly, with apprehension, Thomas came to the entrance. The dragon was fishing excitedly in hundred steps from the cave, and the wonderer, naked to the waist, sat by the dead fire, which was only a black burnt circle in place of coals. He was doing a diligent needlework on the wolfskin jack lying on his laps.

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas called quietly from his cleft, “good morning!”

“Morning,” the wonderer answered vacantly. His eyebrows were knitted on the bridge of his nose. “How have you slept?”

“Thanks,” Thomas replied politely. He moved out a bit, measured the distance towards the excited fisher with his eyes. “How is our horse?”

“Skylark? He seems to be well. Fishing till dawn. They say it’s really the best time for fishing.”

“It is,” Thomas confirmed respectfully. “But what about the sheatfish?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Thomas came out of the cleft. “Sir wonderer,” he spoke with dignity, “in your godly thoughts, you have missed it were you who advised me to help the poor animal to save his fish! Well, for my kind deed… as my friend pilgrim of Rus’ would say, my lard was spread on my own skin!”

The wonderer lowered his needle, his eyebrows flew up to the middle of his forehead. “Really?.. I have some vague memories of that. It seems you truly haven’t stolen that sheatfish… Indeed, that would be too much even of a Christian. Though sheatfish did vanish… Well, well, let’s leave it. God sees everything, especially your Christian god spying on everyone, jealous of no leaf to fall without his will, not a single hair of one’s head…”

Thomas approached the fire, nodded at the humped back with reared comb. “Won’t he devour me?”

The wonderer thought for a while, scratched the back of his head with five, shrugged. “Off chance he won’t.”

Doomed, Thomas sat down near the wonderer. “Off chance,” “we have to go,” “it will come right,” and also “kusim,” a mysterious spell with which the wonderer went right through it and won. Thomas tried to say that magic formula secretly himself, but it had no effect on him, the knight of West: one definitely needed to have a mysterious Russian soul, which is not to be measured against other men’s yardsticks, to say “off chance” and go on with a blind faith in own good luck…

The dragon darted suddenly along the bank, jumped up to a steep. Sitting in the hollow water, he started to claw out clots of yellow clay, with pebbles and grass, snatch them with huge jaws, swallow hastily, tear out new ones, trying to get those without stones, roots, and mud. “What is he doing?” Thomas whispered anxiously.

“Glutted with fish,” Oleg dismissed. Efficiently, he made a knot on the strand, bit a piece off, examined his work with satisfaction.

“But why clay?”

“He has a stomachache. One is helped from it by coals, another by clay… Let him have it. Today we’ll need to fly up to the evening.” He took the flint out of his bag. With a sigh, Thomas went for brushwood. He heard mighty smack on water and roar from the river again. The dog had some grass, as the wonderer said, but soon got hungry for meat.

After a quick hearty breakfast, Oleg collected the slices of roast meat into a separate bag, then emptied the full kettle of thick viscous broth into the dragon’s mouth. The animal bellowed, turned his snout away, put his paw in jaws, trying to rack that filth away, choked, his eyes got five times bigger, about to burst. “Swallowed,” Oleg said with satisfaction. “Alright… He’ll sweat profusely but his illness be gone, like water off a duck’s back. Get on Skylark, Sir Thomas! Now he spreads his wings.”

The dragon dashed over clouds, like a stone shot of a catapult. Oleg and Thomas, tied firmly, were clinging to the comb, wrapping themselves in cloaks: the head wind was blowing off the last drops of warmth.

Thomas, despite his chattering teeth, would let his head down often and look below with a quiver. In the grey-green abyss, there were numberless mounted hosts moving and white spots of yurts among them, millions of those, and swarming about, as though it were billions of ants. “Polovtsians?” he asked.

“Pechenegs,” Oleg answered without looking there. “Their last attack on Rus’.”

“The last wife of priest, as one my friend wonderer says…”

“It’s really last. They got between the hammer and the anvil. Propped up by Polovtsians – new enemies to Rus’.”

“How will it?..”

“As it always was. Many of them came, and more to come. Off chance it comes right…”

Thomas glanced at the wonderer’s gaunt face with ardent sympathy. He undertook to an exorbitant feat: to find the Truth that will end all the unfairness in the world at once. Meanwhile, the triumphant faith of Christ came to his native land, and he turned a persecuted outcast!

“One good thing,” Oleg said with enthusiasm, “we won’t need to cross the lands of Polovtsians, Pechenegs, Berendeys! To tell the truth, I had my heart in heels about that. I don’t know whether we would pass…”

The dragon got flapping abruptly. Thomas was pressed on the slabs, his body filled with lid, even his heart struggled to keep pounding. Oleg sat still, like a stake driven in the flying beast’s back, fingered his charms, closed his eyes, froze up. His face looked dead, and the cold of fear in Thomas’s soul turned an icy block of despair, terror, and doom. The Secret Seven must be enraged. Put all business aside to search for us. They lost the trace when the two friends got underground, then found the wonderer for a moment, but the dragon was flying fast and they lost him again… But they will find and revenge the death of Baruk, the adept of black magic who sold his soul to Devil. Now they know exactly who killed that friend of theirs: the crusader, devoted knight of the Holy Virgin, and the wise wonderer, priest of old gods, some of whom, probably, the Savior did not precipitate into Hell as demons but elevated to angels by his throne!

Thomas managed to fall asleep, waking for a moment only for the dragon’s sharp ascend and only in the first hour. Afterwards he’d only puff in his sleep, fighting the strange heaviness, frown, and when the dragon spread his wings and soared Thomas would break into a happy smile, definitely dreaming of Krizhina and wedding rings.

The days are long in summer but even they end yielding to night. The sun started its way down to the horizon when Oleg stirred, took the dagger in hand. Thomas moved his shoulders. He felt deadly tiredness in every move of the wonderer.

The bony plates gave a quiver, came closer, all but trapping Thomas’s leg. The dragon turned his wings a bit, the whistling of wind grew thinner. As Oleg moved the dagger hilt, the dragon turned obediently, as a spurred horse. Thomas saw a hilly plain, a calm broad river flowing across it. On the other bank, a wonderful city towered on the hills: a colossal city, light and ornate, in golden towers and church cupolas that glittered in the red sunset so bright that his eyes watered, as though he looked at the sun. “Kiev!” Oleg said with grim pride.

“The capital city of Scythia?”

“You may call it Rus’,” Oleg allowed.

The dragon went down abruptly. Thomas clutched unwillingly at the comb: a moment before he was flattening under own weight, like the sheatfish that all but caused a quarrel with the dragon, and now he became as light as a bull bladder blown up by the children of common folk. Thomas held on involuntarily, despite the ropes and belt keeping him firmly, as he’d checked himself. “Where are we to land?” he shouted to the wonderer through the noise of the wind. “The streets are narrow!”

“To Kiev on a dragon?” Oleg amazed.

Thomas looked aside shamefully. How fast we get used to wonders! Yesterday I trembled with fear but today forgot I’m not on the back of a mighty, strong warhorse!

The dragon spread his wings, approaching the ground slowly. In hundred steps above the rocky surface he even made a sluggish flap of membranous sails to soften his fall. His outstretched paws hit against the hard ground resiliently. He went running, moving its paws up and down, with a loud clatter of claws. The spread wings rested on the thick air, after two score sazhens he stopped

Thomas and Oleg, ready beforehand, climbed deftly down the spiky side. They were on the bank of the colossal river, rocky mountains on their right: old, crumbling, gaping with fissures, gapes, caves. Their tops were green with pines, hazels, white-barked birch trees. In two versts away, a small river flowed into Dnieper. Oleg nodded at it. “Pochayna[25],” he said with displeasure. “There Dobrynya killed the last serpent who lived in these mountains!” His face went dark as a thundercloud.

“Don’t be sad,” Thomas told him with care. “We’ve brought another one to breed!”

“You guessed right. Pochayna left a terrible memory: the place where Prince Vladimir renounced even his name and became Basil, where he baptized Kiyans, who were then called Kievins, with force, ordered them to forget Russian names and take foreign ones instead…”

The dragon, whom the wonderer continued to call a serpent, shook his head, looking around, stared with lackluster eyes at the big waves rolling ashore, turned and crept slowly to the gapes of caves.

“He’s settled,” Thomas sighed with relief. “I was afraid he’d rush fishing again!”

“Now he will bear no sight of fish for a week!”

Stones cracked under the heavy belly, the comb now subsided, now reared again. The serpent quickened his run, plunged at full speed into the biggest cave, backed at once, shaking his head, climbed with more caution into another one. His spiky tail flashed and vanished in.

“I hope,” Thomas said, “he won’t disturb the holy prayers of local hermits.” Oleg stared into the water of Dnieper, dark in the twilight. He seemed to have forgotten the dragon, his fingers running over the charms without stop, his eyes anxious.

Thomas glanced the place over with an eye of warrior and crusader. Pity he could not fly the dragon straight to Britain, it shouldn’t have taken more time than a day and night. But sir wonderer is where he wanted to get: those are roofs of his native city. Above all, no dragon will fly farther north, which is for the better in the end. Who of British knights would defeat such a beast? They’ll go into battle one by one and fall on the field… Let him live here till autumn. When cold comes, he will follow wild geese into his native warm lands.

Thomas touched the bag with Holy Grail – it had become as a habitual gesture of his as fingering charms to the wonderer – and followed his friend. The huge sword in well-fitted scabbard seemed rooted in the wonderer’s back, and the compound bow and quiver of arrows were fastened tightly with wide belts. Thomas tied up his belt on the go, lest his sword ring on the armor, came up with his friend and walked shoulder to shoulder with him.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 790