The bony plates gave a quiver, came closer, all but trapping Thomas’s leg. The dragon turned his wings a bit, the whistling of wind grew thinner. As Oleg moved the dagger hilt, the dragon turned obediently, as a spurred horse. Thomas saw a hilly plain, a calm broad river flowing across it. On the other bank, a wonderful city towered on the hills: a colossal city, light and ornate, in golden towers and church cupolas that glittered in the red sunset so bright that his eyes watered, as though he looked at the sun. “Kiev!” Oleg said with grim pride.
“The capital city of Scythia?”
“You may call it Rus’,” Oleg allowed.
The dragon went down abruptly. Thomas clutched unwillingly at the comb: a moment before he was flattening under own weight, like the sheatfish that all but caused a quarrel with the dragon, and now he became as light as a bull bladder blown up by the children of common folk. Thomas held on involuntarily, despite the ropes and belt keeping him firmly, as he’d checked himself. “Where are we to land?” he shouted to the wonderer through the noise of the wind. “The streets are narrow!”
“To Kiev on a dragon?” Oleg amazed.
Thomas looked aside shamefully.
The dragon spread his wings, approaching the ground slowly. In hundred steps above the rocky surface he even made a sluggish flap of membranous sails to soften his fall. His outstretched paws hit against the hard ground resiliently. He went running, moving its paws up and down, with a loud clatter of claws. The spread wings rested on the thick air, after two score sazhens he stopped
Thomas and Oleg, ready beforehand, climbed deftly down the spiky side. They were on the bank of the colossal river, rocky mountains on their right: old, crumbling, gaping with fissures, gapes, caves. Their tops were green with pines, hazels, white-barked birch trees. In two versts away, a small river flowed into Dnieper. Oleg nodded at it. “Pochayna,”[25] he said with displeasure. “There Dobrynya killed the last serpent who lived in these mountains!” His face went dark as a thundercloud.
“Don’t be sad,” Thomas told him with care. “We’ve brought another one to breed!”
“You guessed right. Pochayna left a terrible memory: the place where Prince Vladimir renounced even his name and became Basil, where he baptized Kiyans, who were then called Kievins, with force, ordered them to forget Russian names and take foreign ones instead…”
The dragon, whom the wonderer continued to call a serpent, shook his head, looking around, stared with lackluster eyes at the big waves rolling ashore, turned and crept slowly to the gapes of caves.
“He’s settled,” Thomas sighed with relief. “I was afraid he’d rush fishing again!”
“Now he will bear no sight of fish for a week!”
Stones cracked under the heavy belly, the comb now subsided, now reared again. The serpent quickened his run, plunged at full speed into the biggest cave, backed at once, shaking his head, climbed with more caution into another one. His spiky tail flashed and vanished in.
“I hope,” Thomas said, “he won’t disturb the holy prayers of local hermits.” Oleg stared into the water of Dnieper, dark in the twilight. He seemed to have forgotten the dragon, his fingers running over the charms without stop, his eyes anxious.
Thomas glanced the place over with an eye of warrior and crusader. Pity he could not fly the dragon straight to Britain, it shouldn’t have taken more time than a day and night.
Thomas touched the bag with Holy Grail — it had become as a habitual gesture of his as fingering charms to the wonderer — and followed his friend. The huge sword in well-fitted scabbard seemed rooted in the wonderer’s back, and the compound bow and quiver of arrows were fastened tightly with wide belts. Thomas tied up his belt on the go, lest his sword ring on the armor, came up with his friend and walked shoulder to shoulder with him.
Chapter 39
The sun had hidden below the edge of the earth long before, the dusk thickened. The heads of silver nails, which the Lord nailed the firmament with, were growing brighter the darkening sky. The waning moon got an evil glint, and Thomas recalled inopportunely, with a shudder of shoulders, that it was the sun to dead men who rise from their graves at night and roam the roads, to vampires and other unchristian things.
They walked along a narrow path winding under the steep bank. A thundering tide, as though a sea one, rolled in a shore. Far in the river, there was a glimpse of a bare back, a laughing face, then a splash of big fish tail and the strange creature vanished.
They came to a broad moorage made of thick logs driven into the river bottom and thinner logs atop them: glittering, tightly fitted, with trimmed sides. Those were new, good moorings.
Oleg nodded at a house of logs that stood on a steep hill. “The house of ferryman… The ferry comes from the other bank at dawn tomorrow. You’ll cross for Kiev. That means Britain at your hand: across Czech, Germany, and France.”
“And you?”
The wonderer gave no reply, made his way slowly up the slope to the house. Thomas shrugged. His belly was rumbling: he ate nothing all the way they made on dragon’s back, and then the serpent took away on his back all the remaining thirty-eight sacks of meat — the gift of savage steppe dwellers.
There was a loud croak within his belly, a stir of guts demanding meat. Hastily, Thomas drove away the thoughts of food and young Polovtsian maidens, came up to the house of logs. It looked blind, with windows covered with no shutters but thick planks from inside.
Oleg walked along the wall, holding on the logs, feeling and patting them. His face looked strange. They heard a big dog in his kennel barking loudly, a menacing clang of his chain.
“Let’s go,” Thomas said. “Want to spend a night here? It is warm. We can have it on the moorings.”
“Wait…” Oleg groped about the windowsill, brought some parcel hastily to his eyes, sank down on the ground with a happy sob, leaning his back on the wall. “Home!.. Great Rod, I’m at home!”
Thomas caught him, helped him up his feet, as the dog started creeping out of his warm kennel, snarling. They went back to the moorage, Oleg sat down on logs, unfolded the parcel. Thomas gulped down: on wide burdock leaves, there was a dark round loaf of rye bread, two slices of meat, half a dozen onions. “Your charms told you that?” he asked with great respect.
Oleg broke the bread, offered Thomas. “They had.”
Thomas shook his head. “I need no stolen food.”
“Fool. It was left to us.”
“Sir wonderer… who save the Secret Seven could know we are here?”
“Rus’ knows. We’re in Rus’ already, see?.. The surest sign is the bread on windowsills. We have a custom of leaving some food to beggars, outcasts, travelers, pilgrims. At daytime hosts would give it himself, and when they go to sleep they leave it on windowsills.”
Thomas all but snatched the bread from him, dug his teeth in it, growling. The hunk of bread was dry. It would have been fed to pigs or goats and prospering hosts would bake a new one, but to the travelers even that dry bread tasted better than king’s meal. “Wonderful custom,” he agreed with his mouth full. “What’s the name of this country, you say?”
Big fish splashed in the water, a broad path of moonlight silver led from the moorings to the other bank. They sat on the end of the moorage, their feet dangling. The wonderer swayed his foot, Thomas looked with disapproval — swaying your feet is swaying demons on it — but said nothing. The wonderer’s face was strangely grim, though he was back to his city!
Thomas stripped off his armor: his body was itching all over. The dark water, warmed up during the day,
