The Grail of Sir Thomas

made up for four days,” he said.

“Four?” Thomas was astonished. He went pink, a faint hope flattered in heart.

Oleg closed his eyes, like a dead tired man. “Look down…” he whispered. “We are flying over the loop of Don river.”

“Don?” Thomas started, unable to believe his ears. “I’ve never flied in these lands before, sir wonderer! I’m not used to recognize them form here above… yet.”

“Don… but neither Anglic nor Slavic… wherever Skolots, our common ancestors, passed they named rivers Don… that was distorted by present living nations into Dno, Dnieper, Dniester, Donegal…” His voice broke, he fell asleep in the middle of the word.

Thomas sighed with relief: he had no wish to confess that his neck had gone numb of superhuman efforts to keep the head straight, to avoid a look down, into that creepy abyss. Heart is scratching in boots, about to break out! The valiant sir wonderer hurried too much to praise him for boldness: how could he confess cowardice? I should hold the knightly honor high.

He kept glancing at the terrible horned head crushing through the air in some three or four score steps ahead. Is the dragon starting to turn head or that’s just my imagination? And why does the corner of his predatory mouth twitch?

The wonderer woke up an hour later. His face went pink, his lackluster eyes got some glitter in. His shoulders shivered with cold. “We should have taken a couple of blankets… Though we had none of those. Are we flying the same?”

“Northwest,” Thomas replied, struggling to restrain his ecstatic rapture that the wonderer was awake and available to take the bigger part of concerns on his shoulders.

“You know the map well,” the wonderer told him with respect.

“I have no need of petty maps,” Thomas replied haughtily but felt the hot blood rushing up to his cheeks and stooped hastily to redo the knots on the sacks of meat. “I look at the sun!”

“Sir Thomas, you are a real match for ancient heroes who flew dragons!” Oleg admired.

“Did they… fight mounted on dragons, like on horses?”

“Exactly!”

With a shudder, Thomas looked at the back of dragon’s head. He remembered that snout and those teeth. “Why did they stop it?”

Oleg thought for a while, waved away uncaringly. “People changed… Meanwhile, dragons are just big frogs with wings: drowsy while replete and grabbing everyone without choosing when hungry. They can’t discern allies and foes in the battlefield.”

The dragon made a sudden steep turn. Cursing, Thomas stabbed at the slit between slabs with his sword habitually, held Oleg who leaned all his weight upon him. “I fed this fool too well! He’s frisking…”

Oleg kept glancing at the angry knight silently. The dragon made a couple of flaps, spread his wings to the full again. Thomas screamed, went crawling on the withers to the dagger stuck between plates: the sun shone straight into his eyes.

When he leveled the dragon and returned to the wonderer, they cuddled each other to keep the last warmth. Thomas thought of a tent. No. Wind will blow it away like a flake, and we miss the moment when dragon gets hungry. Involuntarily, he touched the sacks of meat.

“It’s cold,” Oleg said sleepily, “so he eats often. In heat, once a day is enough. And one bull.”

When it started to get warmer, which meant the ground close, the dragon flapped its wings fiercely, and Thomas, with his teeth clenched habitually, clutched at the horny excruciations. At every flap his numb fingers all but unclenched, he was now thrown up, now pressed into the bony back with force that made his eyes pop out like a lobster’s. His guts were squeezed outside, his fingers almost flattened… before his legs were torn away and he hung on the fingertips and the rope, alerting beforehand, as the next moment the dragon would jerk up and Thomas be flung down on his hard back.

Finally, the wings stretched to the full, unfolded like an elephant’s ears. Thomas was not hurled, like a frail ship in storm, anymore. Oleg waited till it was over humbly, as he was a wonderer and hermit. Thomas sighed with relief and crossed himself, watching over his invisible cross staying off the flying beast. “It’s better ahorse,” he sighed drearily. “The earth is holy… and so solid!”

“And afoot, a staff in hand?” Oleg added. “You walk slowly enough to see even bugs and butterflies, these God’s creatures. Greet the passers-by, think of the Great Truth… The God’s world is around: steppes, woods, fields, cows…” He wiped off his tears caused by biting head wind.

Thomas at last started glancing down, into the fathomless abyss where green bumps of mountains moved very slowly, all but standing still. He clenched his teeth, asked in a shaky voice, “Are you sure we made up for four days?”

Oleg stretched his neck, all but leaned over the dragon. “Five,” he said thoughtfully. “And started the sixth day.”

“Sixth?” Thomas gasped.

“The dragon rose very high,” Oleg explained. “The dark spot moving over there is a nomadic tribe, either Polovtsians or Kumans, of Khan Kotyan. And our dragon looks either a lark or a falcon to them…”

Suddenly the giant head turned, looked at Thomas with creepy eyes, each the size of a basin, a dim glitter of bony excruciations over them, puffs of steam bursting out of nostrils with noise. The dragon flung open his broad jaws, his palate and tongue a bright purple blaze framed with sugar-white teeth. Thomas was carried away by the sight of the creepy tunnel of red throat, with a wet slimy glisten of its walls.

He felt a push on shoulder, glimpsed the wonderer’s hand with a slice of meat. A crash of colliding rocks, and the tunnel vanished. Thomas was faced by a dull snout of either lark or falcon. Jaws moved for a while, then the mouth opened even wider. Thomas regained his senses, threw several slices in, and the dragon turned away majestically, while he continued to grind his food evenly, like a cow grinds its cud. “Isn’t it great?” Oleg asked with gloomy fun.

“A magnificent beast,” Thomas answered earnestly. “What wonders can the Lord create! And that’s not the most… In my journeys, I’ve seen really wonderful monsters! One of them as tall as three bulls standing on each other, but five times as heavy as those, his ears hanging on both sides, like leather cloaks, and fangs in his mouth — would you believe it? — as long as my arm, and his nose longer even than a gut. With that gut, he plucks branches to gorge! Picks things up from the ground without stooping and gorges them too! Would you believe that?”

“The world is rich of wonders,” Oleg replied.

“But the most wonderful is that local people went farther than those great heroes of yours! They can ride those animals, plow on them, drag huge stones and thick logs. Beasts are kept in the same way our peasants keep cows or horses: in barns, enclosures, pastures. And they are not feed in plenty — just enough to prevent death of starving.”

Beneath them, bony plates rubbed against each other, cracked and crunched. Oleg put his hand into a slit between bony slabs that had once been scales, to warm his numb fingers: the dragon’s back was warm. He heard wheezing and rattling sounds beneath: the dragon must have caught a chill in his cold damp cave. At a halt, it will be good to make potion of herbs and roots… er… trees and shrubs to cure the animal. Though no need of him tomorrow, we may just let him go, but one should return good for good even to a beast. It is entrusted by old gods.

The sun started sinking to the west, and the dragon was flying evenly the same. Thomas wondered how long he would keep flying, any bird would have allowed a rest by that time, but the wonderer could not reply: he was sleeping, leaned on the comb. His invisible battle against the Secret Lords of the World was really hard.

Thomas spotted the first anxious move of the rollers of dragon’s ears. Once the dragon turned his head, Thomas started to fling slices of meat into his jaws, aiming straight into the gaping tunnel of throat. Maybe his windpipe is there too. Will he choke or not?

The dragon only resembled a lark in his eating while flying, and the huge slices of meat to him were the same as flies to a lark. The wonderer woke up, set to helping the knight at once, though Thomas did not seem to consider his work disgraceful: even kings in times would feed and wash their warhorses themselves and dragons, as he believed the wonderer, once were war mounts. “Sky… lark,” Thomas breathed out when another slice went into