The Grail of Sir Thomas

Both assassins breathed heavily. “Stop jumping as a cowardly monkey!” one said in a guttural voice. “Climb down, be a man.”

“You are not a true knight,” another accused.

“Better you come up here,” Thomas invited. His breath wheezed out, his throat was dry.

“We’ll have to.”

They started climbing on the barrels. Thomas slashed briskly the thick rope keeping the row together. Huge, monstrous wine vessels started sliding apart. At first, the warriors didn’t mind the barrels moving but then they heard a heavy rustle, a groan of dump wood. One jumped off, his sword advanced, the other was still gripping at the side of the huge barrel. It turned round slowly and rolled along with others, speeding up, so he came off, fell on his back, the sword still in hand.

Thomas hung on the scrap of the rope, as thick as a ship one, dangling in the air. The barrels were rolling apart from beneath his feet. The first assassin ran away in fear, but the heavy casks rolling down from a high row were fast to gain speed. The second one was barely up to his feet when a barrel knocked him down and rolled over him. Thomas heard his bones and skull crunch, his chest clap like a burst bull bladder, saw blood gushing from beneath the cask. In the shady cellar, the villain’s blood seemed as dark as tar.

For a moment, Thomas saw a flattened spot. Like an animal’s skin taken off and lying by the bed on the castle floor in winter. Then another barrels rolled over, thundering, pushing among themselves, and Thomas could not see the sprawled body anymore.

The first one had almost reached the wall but the enormous wine-gurgling monsters ran him down and rumpled. The casks cracked, the powerful smell of wines made Thomas’s head dizzy. He felt more drunken than ever before.

That was when he heard a thundering sound. The door shook, all but flying off its hinges. Thomas released the rope and landed with a shriek, “I’ll open, just a moment!”

His feet slipped in the puddles of wine, he fell trice, got all covered with mud, struggled up the stairs. Once he removed the bars, the door flung him away. He cried, fell back into the wine puddle. Sir Gorvel with two soldiers, all armed, appeared in the doorstep. Behind them, he heard Chachar squealing and saw a glitter of helmets, armor, and bare swords.

He felt strong hands on his shoulders, struggled up to his feet. It was Gorvel looking at him with anxiety, his eyes all but popped out. “Sir Thomas! If you wanted a spree, why alone? It’s not friendly. I’ve never treated you like that!”

Thomas shook his head drunkenly. “Oh, Sir Gorvel… Would I ever do such a thing to your wine cellar if not in a grave need?”

“Never mind the wine!” Gorvel dismissed. “What had happened? The woman was jabbering but I got not a damned thing of it, with all that wine gurgling in my head… Anyway, I’m no match for you, sir Thomas. You reek of wine as if you had some forty barrels!”

“No, only three or four,” Thomas comforted. “No more… I mean them damaged. Gave a leak… You may laugh, Sir Gorvel, but I had no lick of your wine at all…”

Gorvel roared with laughter eagerly. Sir Thomas could barely keep his feet, his eyes rolling under his forehead, his tongue tied. If soon he visited the wine cellar, the purpose must have been other than a talk of sublime love!

Afterwards Thomas was asking himself what the hell made him go to that cellar but found no reasonable answer. The only explanation he discovered was that no logics can be found where a woman is involved.

Chapter 8

Oleg was sprawled on his bed awake, fingering his charms. The faint moonlight fell through the guarded window, only part of the bed lit by it. Oleg had estimated how he would lie for sleep to keep his face away from the ghastly light.

His fingers quivered, lingering for long on small wooden figures. He felt his back creepy as he saw every road coming to a dead end. Danger on the right and on the left, above and below, looking into the window and waiting on the stairs. The charm with a double heart meant danger not only for him but for his. But who is mine here? If only not that odd knight with his noble ways… Then nothing was clear at all. Who can link me to the knight and want both of us dead? What can link us together at all?

He closed his eyes and concentrated on his feelings as he ran the wooden figures through his fingers slowly once more. A charm stuck between his thumb and forefinger — the one with the sword and arrows again! Gods persist in warning. In the daily turmoil, it is not always possible to see the signs of a coming trouble or to hear own soul: all-seeing, all-hearing, all-understanding. Sometimes the voice of soul comes in a dream, and the one wakes up enlightened, happy with having invented or discovered a thing in his sleep! Sometimes you hear it early in the morning, while still half-asleep, with your head clean and free of mundane stuff, but only a sorcerer can seclude from the world and listen to his soul. Charms are the simplest tool through which the soul can speak, give a hint or a warning…

Oleg slipped off the bed quietly, his blanket left bulging, and hid underneath. He kept fingering his charms when he heard a soft rustle outside the window. The chamber went dark as if something had screened the window. He seemed to hear a breath held, then a resonant click: Oleg knew that sound of a metal crossbow string. He uttered a short groan, pulled the dangling edge of the blanket down a little, pushed the wooden bed from beneath,

Oleg listened, slipped out briskly, a knife in hand ready for a throw. A short metal arrow was stuck in the thick head of the bed, the blanket pierced through by it. The arrow point had a deep groove in it. Oleg touched the arrow, feeling the warmth of a stranger’s palm, tugged it out. It was deep in the oaken head of the bed, almost half through it. However, the strength of the shooter’s arm could never be known with a crossbow. A child will shoot it with the same strength as a man grown. At once Oleg was near the window, seized the metal rods, strained himself. He heard the rustle of stone crumbs, then the rods bent and, with a faint grind, went off their stone jacks. The court yard was silent save cattle lowing in the barn and a young silly dog yelping behind the outhouses. The moon, with its edge nibbled, floated the sky deadly.

Oleg squeezed himself through the window, scraping his shoulders. His fingertips felt stone ledges and cracks. Gorvel’s castle was almost impregnable, as Franks saw it, but a brave skilled climber or a daredevil could climb its walls up to the roof easily. Franks will have to learn much by a bitter, gory experience. The assassins of Saracen are capable of much more than pompous European knights or simple-minded common folk.

Pressing himself to the wall, he climbed down slowly, stopping and listening. He heard someone descending on the left, hidden by salience of the tower wall. Not a very good climber: he pants, knocks on stones. To judge from the sounds, the climber was clad in mail or light armor. Definitely, he’s no Saracen: assassins always go light, nothing excessive on. They condemn Franks, even while serving them, for taking no step without a pood[9] of iron on their shoulders. He might well be a European. The one eager to learn from Saracens, otherwise he’d not dare to climb a sheer wall in the dead of night. He’d have pleaded tradition, the good Anglic sword strike, or even the valor of the Knights of the Round Table, to refuse flatly.

The stars rocked overhead, but Oleg proceeded down, into the pitch dark. The roofs and the top of walls are moonlit, while the court all covered with impenetrable black shadows cast by the walls. The top of the tethering post is glittering as a lone island in the sea of darkness.

When he smelled the ground close, the crossbowman jumped down. Oleg heard his boots on the stone paves, unclasped his hands at once, never minding the noise: his bare feet made no sound. With his heart wrung with fear, he ran across the moonlit patch in the middle of the yard, plunged head first into the salutary shade and stopped dead, listening. The heavy footsteps were far ahead.

Oleg’s eyes accommodated, and he made out the figure of a man running away, a metal glitter of his back. The crossbowman didn’t left his expensive weapon. The murderer ran up to the rampart,