could stand the light of the sun that was above trees. The next day the direct sunlight would not blind them if they come in it.
“What forest is that?” Thomas asked. “Do you know where we are?”
“The Dark Woods. The only good thing is that no one would look for us here. Even the Secret Seven.”
“Why?”
“No one has ever come out of it alive,” Oleg comforted him. With disgust, he rounded a tangle of snakes intertwined in their mating rite, went through the thickets: as passionless and immersed in his thoughts of eternal verities as Thomas knew him to be almost all the time.
It was hard to walk in woods without roads. Thomas got tired soon, as he had to carry Burlan’s knightly armor on while climbing the logs, which the wonderer could simply jump over, and forcing his way through prickly thickets. The knight started to think of having a rest when suddenly they heard a crackle of twigs, shouts and screams ahead. The noise was coming on them quickly. Thomas lowered his visor abruptly, his hand dropped on the sword hilt.
The shrubs ahead opened like waves, a snorting horse bustled out. A big man in the saddle, in rags of hunting costume, was clinging convulsively at its mane, as the reins had been torn away. Something was strange about his face. Thomas did not get at once why it made him feel creepy all over. As the rider dashed by, Thomas saw a smooth prominent surface in place of his face, as though all its features were rubbed away by the head wind, in the same way it rubs the sharp edges of rocks for thousands of years, turning them into rounded boulders.
The rider darted past and across the glade. Thomas felt an irrepressible fit of sickness. The rider had his face on the back of head. That might have been an effect of the head wind that kept blowing on him for the third century in row or a part of his punishment: to see all the terror chasing him at heels.
Some strange horrible animals, huge, shaggy, and scaly, broke out of the shrubs onto the glade. Heavy blocks of darkness, with only a glitter of sharp fangs, claws, thorns, and combs, they rushed after the madly galloping horse, all but snapping at its legs. The air was rent with roar, screech, barking, a clatter of cloven hooves. All of them dashed across the glade, then into bushes. For a while, there was a clatter of hooves, a squeal dying away.
Thomas shrugged with a shiver, drew his sword in with a thud. “I didn’t think they’d chase him that far!”
“Who was it?” Oleg asked with surprise. “You know him?”
Thomas waved away carelessly. “The Wild Hunter! He’s known to everyone.”
He walked on silently, sure that his explanation was full. He even gave a start when Oleg said warily, “Sir Thomas… Definitely, I realize what a trifle it is, known to everyone on earth, even the sheiks of deserts, the children of mountains and steppes, even to Burkinians, but you know I happened to spend some time in woods… er… in the cave. I’m ashamed to confess it but I’ve missed some events of world importance. The Wild Hunter… who is he?”
Thomas gave the wonderer a surprised look. The Agathyrsians called him Wise, once even the Wise, but if he didn’t know such a famous event… er… “He was a highborn lord,” Thomas explained patiently. “Had a beautiful wife, a healthy child, a fine castle, and faithful vassals. But he had too much love for hunting…”
“Many men have it.”
“But he, in excitement of it, would trample down the crops of peasants, offend the weak. Once he even killed an old man whom he bumped into while chasing a deer… For that, the hunter was doomed to turn into prey himself and be chased forever by a pack of demons. That’s how he keeps galloping for the third century already. My grandsire told me of him.”
“Will his torments last long?” Oleg asked with sympathy. “Punishments don’t last forever, do they?”
“The torments of sinners in Hell last forever,” Thomas claimed adamantly.
“You have a cruel god,” Oleg reproached. “And we Rodians have no hell at all.”
“That’s why you are so shameless! Each takes two wives!”
“Not each, really. It does not befit some men to have two wives, as they can take ten or twenty. Prince Vladimir, for instance, had nine hundred wives and thousand concubines. And he was the prince who brought your Christianity to our Rus’.”[20]
For a long time, Thomas walked silently, confused by such a man as a guide in Christ’s faith, then said, without much confidence, “Yes, that’s possible in your…”
“Why only ours? King Solomon had thousand wives.”
“Then he is in Hell too,” Thomas declared firmly. “All violators go to Hell!”
“Your god looks like a wild nomad to me,” Oleg said. “He enjoys throwing live people into pots of boiling tar, burning them with red-hot iron, skinning or stretching on the rack…”
Thomas was crushing through the thickets stubbornly. He even outran Oleg, to avoid discussing godly matters with that Pagan. “I can’t get one thing… Are we already in Britain?” he asked with concern.
“The Wild Hunter was Angle?”
“He was,” Thomas said through gritted teeth, “but he could be a Scyth as well, couldn’t he? Or a Ross. You may say one could gallop really far for three hundred years. But how did he cross the sea?”
“What if he galloped by land?” Oleg supposed. “Around?”
“Britain is all surrounded by water, sir wonderer!.. However, he could come from Old Angles who stayed on the continent while the rest of the tribe moved to British Isles.” He fell silent, as he stopped near a big block of black basalt that resembled a figure of sitting man. With good will, one could even see his shield and sword.
Silently, Thomas unsheathed his sword, saluted, flung it back into the scabbard with a thud. The knight’s face was grim as a thundercloud, his eyes, blue like wild flowers, went dark.
Oleg shifted his gaze to the knight. “Your kin?”
“Garald,” Thomas replied significantly.
“Ah, just a familiar…”
“Garald,” Thomas said again in a raised voice. He watched Oleg with some annoyance. “A great warrior! Didn’t you in Ross hear of him?”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Holy Virgin! How do you live in this wide world?”
“Getting by,” Oleg sighed hypocritically. “Was he an Angle too?”
“Of pure Anglic blood! Once he led all of his hosts to meet the enemy’s force that landed on our shore. That was the greatest battle. The foes were utterly defeated, but the sons of Garald, his brothers, and even his beloved old father perished in that fighting. Garald was the only one who got no scratch, though he fought ahead of his warriors… He felt so bitter while walking across the endless field all covered with dead bodies that he sat down on a stump, froze in his brooding, and then turned stone!”
They walked, leaving the rock behind. “That battle must have been long ago,”
Oleg said respectfully. “All corpses picked by crows. But why did they fight in wild woods?”
“They fought in a field,” Thomas replied with vexation. “The forest grew up later.”
Oleg cast a glance over the hundred-year-old oaks they passed by, mighty and branchy, over innocent flowers and poisonous grass that killed cattle and turned the soil barren. “I can understand,” he said cautiously, “how the Wild Hunter could get here and why the devil of woods spoke the Old Anglic dialect… But Garald? Are you sure his battle took place in your new Anglandia? In Britain, I mean?”
Thomas glanced at him askew with a fiery eye, like angry horse, waiting for a catch.
“However,” Oleg supposed, “if there was the great migration of tribes and peoples that crushed the old empires of Rome, then our gods, demons, spirits, and ghosts could also move somewhere… The flow of time changes even the concepts of good and evil! And our gods travel from country to country, from nation to nation, change themselves on that way… I recall my amazement when I encountered the Firebird of ours at the other end of the world, in a country of strange people with dark brown skin!
“The Firebirds turned out to be native to that land, have nests there, and ours was just a stupid one with passion for far transmigration. It got acclimated in our country: a fun to shine with its southern feathers at the snowy North…”
They were separated by a huge log, then walked on both sides of a mighty oak. Thomas could not hear the wonderer’s words but glanced at his side with interest. Suddenly Oleg yelled, pointed with hand. In perplexity, Thomas turned his head there — and his blood ran cold for a moment: a boar of colossal size, with his head
