Thomas chocked, raised himself on elbows in great astonishment, despite the sharp pain he suffered from that. “But, holy wonderer! You look like a man just out of Saracen prison… and beaten with all the canes of Nile and Euphrates before that!”
“My feat,” the wonderer said faintly.
Thomas lay down. “A feat is to kill a dragon,” he objected wearily. “To storm into the midst of Saracen hosts, kill their best warriors, capture their banner! A feat is to rescue a princess and to hammer her kidnapper into the ground up to his nostrils…” He fell silent, black flies dancing before his eyes.
Oleg the wonderer stirred the crimson coals with a twig, slowly and silently, with a thoughtful look on his face. Suddenly he leaned, snatched something that looked like a small round stone, shifted it to his other palm. “A dozen of baked eggs. You can’t do without food.”
The smell was exciting. Thomas recalled himself riding to the forest. Hungry as a hunter he was, dreaming of food and some rest in the shadow of trees. “You can,” he replied impetuously. “I see it.”
The hermit raked the rest of the eggs out of the fire. Thomas shelled them with trembling fingers. He swallowed half a dozen without sensing their taste. Not until his stomach got full and heavy did he check himself. “Oh, holy wonderer, I’m sorry! I was so hungry…”
“Not holy,” Oleg corrected gently. “There are holy Magi, holy hermits and preceptors, but wonderers are just wonderers.”
He changed the knight’s bandages and examined his wound. In times Thomas passed out in a fever. His side was still burning but the acute pain subsided. “God reckon it to you,” he said clumsily but with proper pride. “You lingered here because of me.”
“I’m in no hurry,” the wonderer comforted. “Your recovery is fast. Stop that, you owe me nothing. You have protected me from those mad dogs. I’m just paying back.”
“Quits then.”
Thomas woke up with fever several more times. Each time Oleg’s face with sad eyes was low over him. Cold drops ran down the knight’s cheeks: Oleg put on his forehead the cloth, so icy cold that Thomas would have removed it if only he was strong enough.
Finally, he fell so fast asleep that he would wake in another dream, and he did it several times before he found himself under the familiar oak, on a thick pile of twigs covered by his cloak. The rest of his clothes were hanging on the tree.
The hermit was sitting in three steps. He watched indifferently the fire burn out, the thin coating of grey spread over coals. Thomas felt his stomach getting anxious, twitching and howling.
Oleg looked up. His sunken eyes flashed red for a moment. “Back to yourself? Your wound is healing. You can get up, slowly.”
“Holy father,” Thomas spoke in a shaky voice. “I have famine mirages as if I were still walking in Saracen sands. I smell roast…”
“I’ve shot a wild boar,” the wonderer said indifferently. “Does your faith forbid you to eat pork?”
“No, it doesn’t!” Thomas cried fervently and coughed. “Not at all!”
He raised himself a little and was surprised by having managed it with only a little prickle in his side. Oleg raked the coals with a sharp twig, hooked a flat brown stone and offered Thomas. The knight grasped that it was no stone but a thoroughly roasted slice of meat, so he took it. The hot juice dripped down, burnt his fingers. He swore, dropped the slice on the ground, picked it, dug his teeth into the meat hungrily, ignoring the blades of grass stuck to it — but it was too hot. He spat it out hastily, threw into his other palm, devouring the slice with his eyes. The juice was pouring off the bite.
“How you did it?” Thomas wondered. “I had no bow. It’s no knightly weapon!”
“I made it,” the wonderer dismissed. “Sticks are everywhere, and the cord of your baldric made a bow string.”
Gnawing at his meat, Thomas watched the wonderer with astonishment.
The wonderer was surprised. “No one stops killing due to their gods. Why should I?”
“Gods?” Thomas said with horror. “You are Pagan!” He dropped his meat again, picked it from the ground, oblivious of grits and dry grass crunching in his teeth.
The wonderer shrugged indifferently. “My faith is kinder. No persecutions. You can put up the pillar or cross for Christ beside our gods. This is the way Khors, Simargl, and even Taran of Celts came to us. And we accepted them.”
“A Pagan!” Thomas repeated with disgust. “Christ is the god of gods! He is supreme!”
“Put him beside,” the wonderer insisted. “If people start sacrificing to him only, we will remove other gods.”
“Christ accepts no sacrifice.”
“What about praises and canticles? Or some fragrant smoke?”
Thomas wished to close his ears, but there were juicy slices of pink meat steaming over charcoal. He smelled their fragrance. The wonderer hooked the slice after slice and offered him. Finally, the twig itself was given to Thomas. He gulped the food down, his voice half-choked. “Why aren’t you eating? I can see the sun through you.”
Oleg hesitated over the last slice sprawled in the crimson coals like a squashed turtle. He shrugged his pointed shoulders with doubt. “I don’t know… I would live on locusts and wild honey for a long time. I would eat leaves and grass. But meat… It rouses a beast in you.”
“Er… Does it? I only feel appetite rousing in me.”
The wonderer curled his pallid lips in a ghost of smile, his teeth as white and sharp as a predator’s. He picked the hot slice with bare hands and did not wince, rolled it in palms, pressed it. His face seemed motionless: Thomas was not good at reading expressions on skulls stretched with skin.
He held his breath when the pilgrim brought the slice to his pale lips. They opened and touched the roast meat, his nostrils trembled, smelling it. Then the wonderer touched it cautiously with teeth.
Thomas did not dare to move while he watched Oleg eat. When the wonderer swallowed the last bit (masticated almost into a gruel), Thomas breathed out with relief. “There you are! Beyond locusts and wild honey!”
The pilgrim turned to him with bewildered eyes, then nodded as he grasped it. “You don’t understand… In my faith, no food is forbidden. It was part of my feat!
Thomas didn’t get it. “You still keep your Pagan beliefs, don’t you?” he asked with disappointment.
“So far I do,” the wonderer replied gently. “The power of my spirit is strong enough to keep my flesh from trembling at the sight of meat or any hearty meal. You see, I can have it and remain calm. Thus I can proceed up: from reclusion to the Great Reclusion…”
Thomas did not listen. He had fallen asleep, sated by food.
On the seventh day, the knight tried to mount. Once the stallion took his pace, Thomas got pallor as dead and swung. The wonderer barely had time to catch the knight falling down.
When Thomas came to his senses, he was lying under the same oak. All the day long the wanderer was boiling some stinking broth of roots and herbs in the knight’s helmet, knocking black excrescences down from the birch trees to chop into it. He made Thomas drink the vile bitter mix, with all the hard wing cases and little sharp- clawed legs floating there.
Thomas cursed the names of Beelzebub and Astaroth but drank it. As a noble knight, he knew little about potions, leaving it to lesser men, but he took his new friend’s word for it, as believing is noble and Christian.
The wonderer made potions and decoctions and shot birds skillfully with self-made arrows. Once he shot a young badger. As Thomas ate, his young muscled body, hardened in battles, campaigns, and far journeys, was quickly filled with strength. In times he would get up and listen to his body. The wounded side was aching, but no sharp pain.
“When have you washed yourself last time, holy father?”
