lowered menacingly, was rushing on him!
He felt an acute regret that he had no lance with him, raised his hand hastily to the sword hilt. The boar was flying like a catapulted rock, his small red eyes blazed with savage fury, scary glittering fangs were as large as elephant tusks!
Thomas planted his feet wider apart, pulled out the sword. The boar came down on him like a collapsing rock. Thomas felt acute pain, struck forcefully against the hard ground.
There was a menacing roar and cursing aside. Thomas had time to turn on his side before a violent blow came on his back. He flew up, breaking branches, saw the goggled eyes of a squirrel and her young, turned in the air and fell down back on the glade heavily, gave a howl of pain.
The wonderer was yelling in two steps. Thomas turned with effort. He felt maimed and bleeding. A heavy carcass fell down on him, splashing with hot blood, twitching and kicking, his armor screeched. Then the carcass was moved away, he heard the wonderer’s angry voice asking, “Are you alive?”
Thomas struggled a bit up on his elbow. The boar lay in two steps, in a pool of blood. He was all but slashed in two, with the second deep wound across his skull where the sword broke it. “Thank you, sir wonderer,” Thomas said emotionally.
The wonderer stood over him, pale with rage, the blooded sword shaking in hands, his eyes blazing with fury. “Why stand on his way, you fool? No space to jump?”
“Sir wonderer!” Thomas said with dignity. “The boar was running straight on me! If I jumped aside, wouldn’t that be cowardly?”
The wonderer gasped with rage. “Cowardly?.. What a noble Angle!.. Do you really mind what a boar thinks of you?”
Thomas thought for a while and admitted reluctantly, “Truly I don’t. But the knightly traditions…”
With great effort, he struggled up. For a long time they walked in silence: the wonderer was angry. Thomas tried not to limp, endured the pain of bruises and abrasions. They left the boar carcass behind: no need of meat yet. The wonderer frowned more often, seized his bow.
That was how they went for almost half a day. Gradually, the wonderer softened, started to give brief answers. The knight felt guilty and spoke to him first. The wonderer started to tell of the Dark Forest but stopped in the middle of a sentence. Thomas saw blood rushing back from his face. Oleg turned all ears, even stopped for a moment, then grew even paler and cried hoarsely, “Get your butt in gear! Nothing to save us but our legs… And you, fool, have them broken by boar!”
“Won’t
“If only it could! I have the same piece of iron on my back.”
“Sir wonderer! If legs were always the rescue, hares would never die!”
Oleg rushed ahead, through shrubs and wind-fallen trees, picking almost no way. Thomas clenched his teeth, ran after him. The forest looked the same, Thomas could see no danger but he’d made enough miles together with the wonderer to trust in his charms and Pagan intuition.
The wonderer darted across the thickets, like a loach. Sometimes he stirred no branch, as though he turned into smoke or had learnt from Agathyrsians to pass through solid things, while Thomas in his steel shell broke through, like a flying rock, paying no hint to prickles and sharp twigs. Oleg often glanced over while running, looked for the knight but Thomas hardly ever dropped behind. In times Oleg got stuck in a tangle of branches but Thomas, though heavier at his run, crushed any obstacle like an enraged rhino. He left behind a broad trodden road covered with broken young trees and branches, ruined anthills.
They were running for ages. For all that time, Thomas heard not a single sound of pursuers, no howl of wolf or other animal, no crackle of twig or small branch behind. Only once a big shadow darted above, but the three floors of branches made a solid screen between the sky and the ground, so that bird, if any bird could be that large, should have seen not a damned thing. When the shadow moved away to where they came running from, Thomas seemed to see that the wonderer livened up a bit, stopped hunching like a hare at sight of kite.
However, the wonderer kept yelling for him not to stop, not to slow his run. The remainders of the mountain mead were blown away, Thomas was flung from one trunk to another, his mouth salty, his body screaming with pain. In addition, the dry ground was replaced by a thick carpet of green moss. His feet kept sinking into the wet champing layer and became as heavy as the stones to tie ships to in a port.
The wonderer urged him on. Through the shroud of muddy sweat, Thomas saw him nearby: Oleg gripped his shoulder, dragged on, yelled, all but hitting him. Thomas dragged his feet along. He wished nothing but to fall down and die in peace, without even wiping the salty sweat off his forehead.
Suddenly his eyes were dazzled by a glaring light. Exhausted, Thomas raised his head, stared in perplexity at the huge dark trunks, especially dark and gloomy because of the bright light shining behind them!
Oleg dragged Thomas up to the edge of the Forest, pushed him forward. Thomas made several steps, squeezed himself between the giant trunks that stood very close there, on the border of Forest, to protect, like a knightly armor, the tender inside of Woods from the scorching breath of endless Steppes.
Chapter 33
There was flat steppe ahead: no end to it, not a single bush nor a tree — only low grass, tough and stunted, that had won the struggle for life in the ruthless light of blazing sun!
Thomas made a step out of the shade of trees, reeled of the heavy torrid heat that came down on him. There were some clouds, as white as lambs, in the blue sky, but they made no obstacle for the scorching sun to burn the ground. At once, he got nasty trickles of sweat running down under his armor.
Oleg glanced over at the Forest with fear. “Let’s go… Forest animals can dart out on the edge.”
Obediently, Thomas limped away from the dark wall of the Forest, though it did not seem that scary anymore.
“Sir Thomas,” the wonderer said reluctantly, “now I know precisely where we are.” His face was depressed.
Thomas got frightened. “Did Agathyrsians take us back?”
“Just the opposite. But… they were going east and let us out on the way. Now we are much closer to Rus’ than to Britain.”
They walked in silence, Oleg kept his hasty pace. Thomas, with his head aching, could hardly get the meaning of his words. “We got closer to my Britain? Or farther from it?”
“Closer to Rus’,” Oleg replied evasively.
“So we’ll have to cross your Rus’? At last I shall see which kingdoms it is clutched between!”
Oleg mended his pace. Thomas could not see his face, wanted to ask more questions, but the enraged sun made his armor red-hot, boiling him in own sweat so that he felt like a crayfish in an iron pot. He dragged his feet along on dry yellow grass, hoping he’d live till the halt.
When the wonderer cried the halt, Thomas fell down, as though the ground was kicked from beneath his feet. After a while, he turned onto his side, stretched his aching legs. As Thomas had a look through the blades of grass, he gave a scream and rose to his knees.
Far ahead, there was a bright gleaming wall… or rather a rampart made of strange orange blocks. The sight of it made Thomas’s heart beat faster. Oleg followed the knight’s sight, pointed in another direction indifferently. There was a similar glittering circle of rampart. It could house a huge castle but Thomas doubted whether it did: all he could see was the tall wall sparkling in the sun.
Oleg gathered some grass blades, thick and knotty, made a fire. Thomas looked with disgust at the two fat lizards that the wonderer had killed by hurling stones. The knight’s hunger made his stomach gripe, but that food was too unchristian!
“Better a small bug than a hungry mug,” Oleg comforted coolly. “Would you prefer to go without food?”
“Give me your frog.”
“No frog. That’s a small crocodile. Do you recall the fare of Agathyrsians? Those were big crocodiles. It’s all the same sort.”
Thomas ate the lizard up with its skin and claws, then took a stone and waylaid two more stupid ones that
