The Grail of Sir Thomas

dragon’s mouth.

“Who?” Oleg wondered.

Thomas hurled another blooded slice. The dragon finally turned away, with his cheeks swollen. “A falcon hunts in the sky but he eats on the ground. And we are throwing flies to a skylark.”

Oleg hemmed, wiped his palms on the bony plate. There was a constant move beneath, as though Thomas and Oleg sat on flock of migrating turtles.

“We only have meat for one feeding!” Thomas reminded anxiously.

“Let him chew that,” Oleg replied with discontent. “Gorged like a hamster. We can see his cheeks from behind!”

The dragon’s cheeks were bulging. He chewed evenly, the wind blew saliva off the corner of his mouth, Oleg recoiled in time, and the basket-sized drop plopped down on the knight. Cursing, he started to disentangle from the sticky slime, completely oblivious, in his fury, of the dragon’s flapping wings again in a swift ascend. “Isn’t that beast tired?”

“Don’t know,” Oleg replied warily. “I haven’t flown for a long time.”

“I look after my horse,” Thomas reproached. “When winded, he’s no fit for a saddle.”

“I have no horse,” Oleg growled. “We should take care of our soul! But we put it the last.” Nevertheless, he looked with doubt at the dragon’s stretched neck. The beast was flying in a crane way: legs tucked up, while the neck and combed tail stretched in a line. “Night is soon,” Oleg said unwillingly. “Need to find a place to spend it. And let the beast take a breath. He may be like a horse that falls dead at a tilt!”

Thomas looked down apprehensively. Wooded hills under them looked like some marsh hummocks. “How to make him land?.. I’ve only flown down from a horseback. And once from a tower — a stone tower of forty feet! Down on the stone-paved square, in my full armor.”

Oleg gave the knight a respectful glance, climbed up to Thomas’s dagger, stabbed in a different place. “Hey, Skylark! Get down to the grass. The one we call a forest.”

The dragon uttered a shrill scream, made a sharp turn aside, as though a fish in water, folded his wings suddenly and dropped — like no stone but a whole rock! — down. Thomas’s heart stopped beating, his legs and bottom came off the dragon back. He hung in the air, with only the rope to keep him. Their fall got faster and faster, the air swished and screeched around.

Oleg pulled the knife out hastily, his face went white. He stabbed in a different slit, the dragon made a slight turn but kept falling like a rock that slipped off the mountain top. The ground rushed to meet them, tiny houses were sprouting up, dark points turned mice, then cows.

Thomas struggled his heavy head up, saw the tops of trees darting by, very close. The dragon flew over the forest, his wings spread, a huge ugly shadow rushed before him. Then there was a broad glade, even a small field, all in sticking stumps and gaping pits. The dragon was driven straight onto the stubs. Thomas felt sick, closed his eyes, and pressed himself into the slits between plates.

The back beneath them suffered a sudden terrible jerk. The wonderer swore through gritted teeth. Thomas was hit in face, his mouth filled with blood. The rope almost tore him in halves but kept. Thomas opened one eye. Trees were darting past him in ten steps, as dragon ran on the ground, with his wings advanced to reduce the speed, his breath rattling and sniffling, his nostrils steaming. His wings lowered gradually, with a dry rustle, and folded.

Oleg cut the rope with a single move. Thomas gripped a bony protuberance with both hands, his feet clung at another one. If he had no helmet with lowered visor on, he would have also clutched at the dragon’s withers with his teeth. Oleg moved his lips apart. Well done, knight, you hold like a mite on a young goat. He clapped Thomas on shoulder.

Thomas suddenly came off the solid back, turned twice while rolling down a slope, at last hit the ground and remained lying there, with his arms wide spread, staring vacantly in the evening sky.

The wonderer’s anxious face emerged over him. “Sir Thomas! Are you all right?”

“I am,” Thomas croaked. “But for my being completely well, this damned skylark should have not hatched out!”

“Are you hurt?” Oleg gasped. “I seemed to hear of you falling down from a forty-feet tower. In full armor, into a stony yard.”

“I did fall!” Thomas snapped. “But not from the very top! I climbed just three feet up before they pushed me off.” Moaning, he got up, glanced back at the grey-green hill of a dragon. The animal had his head advanced and laid on the ground. His eyes were dark with tiredness, his wings, which had pushed the knight off so uncaringly, lay on his back like old sails, the comb completely covered by them. The long tail was still, only the very tip twitching a bit, the sharp needles on the comb were lowered and stiffened.

Thomas moved his shoulders, the bones crunched, as though the dragon had chewed him instead of meat and spat out.

“I gather brushwood, and you feed the beast,” Oleg suggested.

The sacks lay where they fell, thrown off the back by wings, in two score steps, behind the tip of dragon tail. Thomas measured that flying lizard with his eyes, counted about forty feet from tail to head and over forty-five the other way round. “May I gather it?”

“You said you used to feed and clean your horse!”

“Cleaning this? I’d rather make three fires.”

Oleg, with no burden of armor on him, dragged the remaining sacks up quickly. The dragon opened one eye a bit, sighed with grief. Oleg knocked impatiently with the toe of his boot on the lower jaw, as though on a door of inhospitable hut. Lazily, the dragon opened his mouth a bit. Oleg tried to squeeze the whole sack of meat through but failed, so he shook the meat out before the monstrous mug. Huge nostrils started to move, then stretched, got wide like foxholes. Oleg shoved the blooded slice into tightly clenched lips. Reluctantly, the dragon moved his jaws apart. Oleg thrust the rest of the meat into with force, the mouth closed, and the tired dragon fell asleep, with his cheeks swollen like a thrifty hamster’s.

Thomas kindled a bonfire, making it providently behind the trees, in case if dragon does not like the smoke. When Oleg came back after a short hunting, the kettle was boiling with water. The bigger twigs had burnt down, crimson coals twinkled invitingly.

Thomas took two hares from the wonderer, shook his head. “I thought we have the aurochs liver… How much you eat. Though a hermit!”

“We shouldn’t eat the dragon out,” Oleg explained. “We have nothing to feed him tomorrow. Have you thought of it?”

Thomas disemboweled the hares, threw one into the boiling water and resolved to roast another one on coals, which he, to tell truth, had prepared for that matter, as he knew the wonderer. “And you?”

“There are whole herds grazing in the steppes.”

They had their meal in silence, tired, though all the day long they did nothing but sat on the flying dragon. Thomas was first to hear the dry thuds of unshod hooves, threw his spoon aside, gripped his sword. Oleg finished the soup hastily, got up too. The bow and arrows were on his back, his sheathed sword by the fire.

Some mounted men rode out onto the glade: short, neatly built, with black hair and black eyes. Each one has a bow behind, a strange felt hat on his head. Their horses are rather small but look hardy and evil. Thomas counted twelve of them, and a dense wall of riders that could be discerned at a distance…

The men raised their hands, cried something out in guttural voices. One of them dismounted, walked forward slowly, advancing his palms. Oleg nodded Thomas to stay in place, walked slowly to meet the man. Thomas, with his hand on the hilt of huge sword, watched Oleg tensely. The latter came up fearlessly to the black-haired man who was all but a head shorter, they spoke in low voices. The black-haired man pointed at the riders, even moved his hand in the direction of those behind the trees, told Oleg something in a fast guttural voice, with several nods at the dragon: he slept at the other end of the glade, his mighty breath bending the trees before, their leaves had fallen down of his loud snoring.

Oleg glanced back and shouted. “Sir Thomas! Have your rest. I’ll go round to the nomad camp. Get to know news. I haven’t been to Rus’ for a long time, and they ride just from there.”

“Are you safe?” Thomas cried anxiously. “Aren’t they Polovtsians?”

“They are,” Oleg replied. “Kumans! Those Polovtsians who become our friends get the name of Kumans.