The Grail of Sir Thomas

Climbing, the wonderer all but reached the hole when there was a red flash in the dark. A scary green paw came out: as large as a log, very sharp-clawed, covered with thick plates of scales…

The claws scratched on the stone, leaving deep marks. After that, a grey-green rock came out from the cave, as it seemed to Thomas, but that rock suddenly came apart and Thomas got his legs trembling: it was a dragon! Sir Gawain, according to singers, had once slain a dragon as large as a warhorse but that one was ten times that large! Even with less than half of his body out, he looked like a long barn, his back covered with bony plates that turned thick scales on his sides, each scale the size of a knightly shield. The dragon’s head was as large as a bull, and his mouth could easily house a nanny goat with two kids!

The dragon opened his mouth, as red as hell’s stove, his teeth like daggers, uttered a sullen roar. Thomas dropped his sword and clutched at the helmet, lest it be blown away with the terrible wind. The beast’s nostrils were curved like doghouses, emitted either steam or smoke. His eyes were two kettle bottoms: prominent, huge, unblinking. His belly rubbed against stones with a screech of Egyptian pyramid being dragged, his back brushed on the vault, the bony plates were showered with pebbles and earth dust. The beast’s paws were similar to frog’s or lizard’s if one could imagine a lizard as big as a hill.

The beast stopped, jerked its huge snout, squinting in the bright sun. The sunrays got refracted in the prominent eyes covered with a transparent film of skin. The dragon gave a roar again, started backing and hunching. His flabby neck, in faded, shabby bony mails, got wrinkled with thick folds.

Chapter 36

Trembling all over, Thomas said loudly a prayer to Holy Virgin, the defender and patroness of bold warriors, entreating her to drive the dragon back into the hole: that beast was too huge even for Lancelot together with all the Knights of the Round Table to cope… Suddenly he stopped praying, swore angrily, with bad words of all the saints, their mothers, children, and relatives: the wonderer had climbed on the stone ledge, picked up the crumpled skin, and rushed to the beast!

Thomas bellowed, calling the foolish Pagan not to get into the mouth of his beastly god. The human sacrifice was cancelled by Christ who became the last sacrifice himself, so don’t be foolish, stop, wait… If I had a good horse and long lance, he thought angrily, I could gallop on the dragon. Whether kill him or not, but die with honor. Now I can only fall dead along with the Pagan…

The dragon opened his mouth, which looked like a cellar, uttered a demanding roar. Oleg on his run flung the skin into it. The dragon’s jaws slammed with an earth-shaking thud, started to move, grinding the meat along with the skin, like giant millstones.

Thomas climbed on the ledge near Oleg who breathed heavily. The wonderer turned, happy to see the knight. “Sir Thomas? Most welcome! Why no meat with you? Please bring it, as much as you can.”

Thomas was out of breath, his eyes blazed with the courage of martyr. “Sir wonderer…” he babbled, panting, “strange games… you play…”

“Play?” Oleg got confused. “If you see fun in it, I’d change with you, Sir Thomas! I have stacks of work overhead. No time for games.”

“And… er… dragon?”

“Dragon?” Oleg got confused again. “Ah, serpent? That is the horse I told you of. Or I forgot to tell?”

Thomas lowered his hefty sword, feeling a bit ridiculous. “The… horse? No need… to fight?”

“No more than with your warhorse, Sir Thomas. Only while teaching it with bridle… While we feed him, he won’t devour us. But if he gets hungry…”

“I see!” Thomas cried. He did not dare to drop his heavy sword, only sheathed it, rushed down the slope as fast as he could. Wild ideas collided in his mind, strange faces darted by. Thomas forced himself to think of nothing, lest he go mad like some men in that long exhausting journey from northern lands to Jerusalem. All sorts of things happened to those who got into that strange new world with no winter, where people had faces as black as tar — at first crusaders mistook them for devils from hell — and everything went another way…

He dragged the meat above, bathing in sweat, but did not dare to take off even the baldric with two-handed sword, not to mention five-stoned armor. Oleg hurled the meat into the mouth of dragon who opened his jaws less and less willingly. At last he refused to open them. Oleg shoved a bleeding slice straight to his nostrils. The dragon looked at it with disgust in lackluster eyes and turned away, as he had no eyelids and, as Thomas realized, could not close eyes.

“Enough?” Thomas asked, staggering. Turbid sweat was pouring over his eyes, his legs giving way, worn out by that constant climbing up and down. Thomas felt pity for monkeys who had to climb trees all the day long.

“Are you kidding?” Oleg wondered. “It’s time to carry up all the rest of meat! A saturated serpent won’t rush on it. While hungry, he wouldn’t have devoured all of it but flung it sideways, trampled on… He’s a very stupid animal, after all. God created him long ago, when He was young and did not know the better way.”

Thomas dragged himself back on feeble feet. He was glad he had time for sleep and rest before, though now one could wring him out and throw down to wipe feet on, but while he had at least a drop of strength…

He dragged the meat from the cleft up the slope, cursing through gritted teeth the stupid dragon who had too little brain to make his hole lower, where the ground was softer, cursing his stupid fate that drove him at the back of beyond, though his wise tutor said one can see God staying at home, cursing the heat. Meanwhile, the wonderer tied the bleeding slices into skins, put one of those bundles on his back, came to the dragon and went climbing up his huge green paw fearlessly. Clinging at bony plates, Oleg got up the beast’s back covered with thick shell. To Thomas, he looked like a crow on a plough horse: that kind is constantly ridden by both crows and rooks, which peck away horseflies and gadflies and even those white worms infesting poor animals under their skin in heat. Such horses would walk carefully, in order not to fright away the sharp-pecked strangers who eased their torments.

The wonderer fidgeted, settling in, tied the bundle quickly to the broad bony spike, yelled to Thomas. “Sir, I see all of it from here! Drag up the rest of meat!”

Thomas glanced back at the dragon’s huge snout: it lay on his paws, his eyes covered with the film of skin in sleep, his nostrils steamed. “Sir wonderer… Do you really want to ride him?”

“Ride?” Oleg asked with concern. “Serpents are not very good at running. So they would hide in caves and only steal the cattle at night for the first seven years. Until they have their wings.”

“Wings?”

“They are a bit better at flying than running,” the wonderer explained with a grimace.

Thomas, dumbfounded with all that happened, was dragging the last bundles of meat tiredly, giving them to wonderer who set them on dragon’s back: it had spikes, protuberances, slits between bony slabs, and the wonderer had made a real web of ropes with enough room for both men and meat. He walked on the dragon’s withers as though it were a barn roof. The dragon, drowsy after a hearty meal, paid him no more heed than a dog pays a fly. As Thomas served the meat, he kept glancing slantwise at the dark entrance to the cave from which the dragon leaned out. Some huge, scary shapes could be seen in there, the depth smelled strongly of scum, stagnant water, and frogs.

Suddenly the dragon stirred, opened his menacing eyes. He yawned, with his mouth opened wide, shut it with such a creepy thud that made Thomas’s blood run cold. These jaws can flatten a man in steel armor into a thin metal plate, reduce his bones to gruel… “Sir Thomas,” Oleg cried anxiously, “get up here!”

The dragon breathed steam out, started to creep slowly out of the cave. The stone ceiling screeched. The huge bony comb along the dragon’s back, which was pressed along to it within the dark cave, was standing up. “Sir Thomas!” Oleg shouted. “The dragon is about to fly!”

On both sides of dragon’s body, there were huge colorless logs of protruding bones, as long as ship masts, stretched with thick skin, while all the remaining skin was coiled in thick rings on the dragon’s long back, which seemed endless as the creature kept getting out. The wonderer sat only on his withers, and the dragon really was a giant long lizard…

“Fast!” Oleg yelled fiercely. “He’s flying up!!!” He leaned head down, holding with his feet, stretched his arm