The Grail of Sir Thomas

At noon Thomas woke the wonderer up gloatingly, as he had asked for it. Almost at the same time, the dragon had a wish to eat, and the half-awake wonderer together with the knight flung fat slices of meat hastily into the red furnace. The dragon kept chewing. Finally, he turned away, but then decided to fill up the cheek pouch on the other side. Thomas pretended not to notice it, the wonderer threw bleeding slices up alone, then wiped his hands for a long time on the lifted comb that looked like a tall bony fence of sharp stakes.

By evening Oleg made the dragon descend. They landed on the bank of a narrow river that ran jumping on stones, its bed cut in the crumbling rocks, so unusual in the steppes, as flat as an endless table.

That time Thomas jumped off a moment before the huge wings folded with a thundering sound on the back, pressing down the bristled comb. He rolled over head, his iron clanging, all but ran into own sword. The wonderer followed the dragon who lay down on the bank and lapped the water greedily. Oleg shook out meat from two sacks near the awful snout.

Thomas limped into shrubs to gather brushwood, as the sun was sinking to the horizon. When he came back with a first armful, a tiny fire already burnt on the bank: the wonderer lit it on dry grass blades and wooden splinters washed ashore by waves. In hundred steps upstream, there were loud splashes, hits on water, as though the river was battered with logs. The dragon, after having gobbled half of the meat and thrown the rest around swinishly, sat up to his belly in the water, almost blocking the river, his outspread wings bent by the current. The seething water ran over wings and paws, with spikes looking out of the foam, like sharp pales in the city wall. The dragon bowed down to the very water, peered very closely in, holding his breath, then suddenly stroke with both paws, raising a cloud of spray. Thomas dropped dry twigs with a crash, glancing apprehensively at the strange animal. “What’s he doing?”

“Fishing,” Oleg muttered.

“Are you jesting?.. Fish to him is small like flies to you.”

“Or you,” Oleg parried. “Do you only hunt for food? Or for the joy of it too?.. Dragon has a pleasure to recall his childhood. When he was small, he lived in water… Fish was a match to him then. A match or bigger.”

The dragon jumped with squeaks. His fat bottom twitched, prominent frog eyes flashed. His forepaws were groping under the water, his claws so wide apart and out at full length that it all but made Thomas’s legs give way, and own armor seemed to the knight no thicker than maple leaves. “Probably,” Oleg said, thinking of some other matters, “he is small still… Dragons live for thousands of years. The one two hundred years old is a teenager…”

The teenager, with a terrible scream that made the banks tremble, was pulling out of the water some fluttering log with fins, Oleg hardly recognized a sheatfish in it. Backing, the dragon stepped on his own tail and fell but kept the sheatfish, floundered with it in the water for a while, raising clouds of spray and shaking the ground, flung it hastily far away on the bank and rushed to the river again. He bustled about, with a passion of hunting, plunged his head into the water up to the ears, peering at the rocky bottom, and when a strong wave rolled overhead he did not recoiled in fear but plunged deeper in excitement: only his spread comb and fat bottom remained over the water.

Twice he threw on the bank a hundred-year-old pike, which looked like a green mossy drowned log, while the miraculous sheatfish, a giant Oleg had never seen before, was writhing heavily, bending, sliding gradually down the slope to the water. The dragon jumped fussily, spanked with giant paws, trying to claw the prey, snatched it with jaws. Meanwhile, the sheatfish, feeling the water close, bent his body twice with its last strength and its tail, forked like a mermaid’s, touched the water. The sheatfish leapt in the air, plopped down into the shallow water, and crawled on, winding his body and leaving a deep trench, which was buried with sand immediately. The sheatfish was getting deeper with every moment. Finally, the wave was cut by a dorsal fin, which looked like a small dragon’s comb. It darted to the middle of the river and vanished.

“Fool,” Oleg grumbled. He fingered his charms, casting vacant glances at the dragon’s comb spread with excitement. “His pikes are also creeping to water… What an offended roar he will make!”

“May I keep the pikes?” Thomas said anxiously, but Oleg heard sympathy in the knight’s voice too. “We’ll need less meat for him.”

“Keep them,” Oleg growled. His eyes were vacant, he kept fingering charms, his lips moved, whispering either prayers or spells.

Thomas rushed to the fishing spot, not afraid of the wet dragon: no savage beast anymore but a fervent fisher whom the knight could understand as he was one himself. With effort, he dragged the heavy pikes far from the water. Wet and covered with slime, they writhed fervently, snapped with toothy jaws. Thomas had a hard time helping the luckless fisher: the pikes turned out to be tenacious of life, though both had marks of claws on their heads. When he tried to grab the first one by tail (it was dangerous to seize by gills a creature with crocodile jaws and inch-long teeth), the pike’s mighty jerk threw him down on the ground, with an iron thunder, the wet sand mixed with fish slime hurled into his eyes. Swearing like a Templar, he stunned both with his iron fists, finishing the dragon’s work, dragged them on the dry as far as he could.

The dragon got out, put his paws apart, shook himself like a dog. Crayfish and pebbles flew in all directions, along with clouds of sand and water. He had the third pike clenched in teeth. He trotted on the bank merrily, a mischievous glitter in his eyes, even the mails on his snout a bit apart. As he spotted Thomas dragging a pike away by tail, he stopped abruptly. The lower jaw dropped, the fresh-caught pike plopped wetly down on the ground, leapt twice, splashed into the shallow water near the bank, its body bent forcefully once more and darted into the depth.

Thomas dropped his pike, cowered low of the terrible roar. The dragon yelled, making the ground tremble, trees bend, and leaves fall on the ground as though from shaken branches. His eyes got creepy and bloodshot, the huge comb reared from the withers to the tip of his tail.

The wonderer glanced back at the roar. “What’s up him?” Thomas cried to him in fear.

“Where did you put sheatfish?” Oleg cried back.

“He thinks I ate it?”

Oleg stood up, cupped his hand at his forehead. “Where’s it then?”

“I didn’t touch it at all!” Thomas shouted in fury.

Oleg watched him with great doubt. “And where were you dragging that pike?”

Suddenly the dragon rushed forward, in short, fussy jumps. His eyes were fixed on Thomas, jaws started to open, with a glitter of teeth. Thomas stood as though enchanted, watching the horrible beast coming on him, when a desperate scream cut his ears, “To the cleft! The cleft near you! On the left!!!”

Obeying, Thomas jumped to the left, over a fat pike, fell into the cleft, rolled away from the entrance. At once it went dark, the rock trembled of a heavy blow, the awful roar of frantic dragon slashed his ears. The beast tried to shove his snout into the narrow slit, bellowed of disappointment. Thomas clung fast into the corner, out of his strength, gasping for air the stink of dragon’s breath, his head cracking of the terrible roar.

When the dragon fell silent for a moment, drawing in the air for next scream, Thomas jerked his head up, looked around. He was trapped, no other way out. The dragon gave a dreadful roar, tried to put his paw into the cleft. Thomas felt his hair stirring under the helmet, as the monstrous claws scratched the stone floor in just a step. Somehow the dragon managed a turn, his claws all but reached the knight. Thomas flattened himself on the wall, watching with terror the paw scratching stone in two inches from his leg. He glanced back in despair, but that cave was a solid stone hollowed out: no chink for a mouse to get in or out!

When Thomas could not anymore discern whether it was dark of the beast’s body screening the light or the starry night sky, he tried a look out. He barely had time to recoil: the monstrous paw covered the cleft immediately, pebbles crunched on the diamond-hard claws. The horrible animal kept guarding his prey!

He heard steps, then the wonderer’s sleepy, yawning voice. “Is that you, Sir Thomas?.. Sleep if you must. Let dragon cool down. Don’t re-open his sores.”

“Sir wonderer!” Thomas cried nervously. “I give the word of noble knight’s honor: I didn’t touch that sheatfish!”

The dragon growled menacingly on the other side of the cleft. A monstrous paw screened the stars, hit on the crevice with a thunder. Small pebbles rang on the knight’s armor. Thomas recoiled.

He heard the wonderer’s voice, peaceful and comforting. “I believe you, actually… Though the sheatfish did disappear…”

“You think,” Thomas cried in terror, “I ate that rotten sheatfish?”