could be seen through the wounds on their cheeks. The three of them had their male parts chopped off and one had those parts in his mouth. Two men had their bellies slashed open and filled with earth and stones, bluish guts lying on the grass nearby.
Suddenly Thomas seemed to hear a moan. He flinched, jumped up, glanced back at Oleg in fear. The wonderer nodded again. “The last is alive. They put out his eyes and teeth, transfixed his ears, cut sinews in his limbs… but spared his life.”
“How can he live?” Thomas whispered in superstitious awe. “How can it… that… stay alive?”
“Man is a great stayer, to his misfortune. Or his good fortune.”
Thomas, still disbelieving, sheathed his sword and seized a misericord from his belt. Averting his eyes in pity and disgust, he stabbed the empty eye socket, scaring away the flies. The body twitched, uttered a scary rattle, as a blooded scrap of a tongue quivered in the mouth.
Thomas was almost weeping, pallid, his hair on its ends. He hastened to stab the rest two with the narrow blade. He didn’t find it in him to drive the misericord into untouched eyes, so he stabbed the temples. Each body gave a shiver before it was free of suffering.
Oleg watched him intently. His eyes, green as fresh grass, went black as night. “Well, how’s it? Is it easier to kill through a narrow slit of your visor? When you can’t see those you kill?”
Half-oblivious, Thomas climbed into the saddle. He sounded hoarse with suffering. “I see it, sir wonderer… That’s why our Holy Church tries to prohibit the use of bows, especially crossbows, at war. Two edicts proclaimed crossbow an instrument of Devil. With a crossbow, you can kill without a single look in enemy’s eyes!”
“Crossbow is a thing of progress! The Church is right: if no way to prevent killing completely, then it should be made difficult at least. You have to see their eyes…” He fell silent, rose on the stirrups, cast a vigilant glance around.
Thomas rode silent, suppressing the wish to look back at the maimed bodies. The wonderer cupped a hand at his forehead, strange sparkles in his shadowed green eyes. Thomas glanced at him slantwise, feeling his anxiety and strain. The wonderer was a far cry from that hermit, exhausted with fasts and self-torments, whom Thomas had once come upon and saved from mad dogs.
Oleg drove his horse silently to the far green hills. Thomas glanced back at the sprawled bodies. “We should have buried them… A requiem? I know few words in Latin… Laudetur Jesus Christos…”
“Amen,” Oleg finished. “You keep forgetting that your Christian faith has not conquered all the world yet! Those might have been fire worshippers.”
They felt a stinky wind from great wings overhead. Those were imperial eagles, a whole flight of them, floating in their wait for people to leave. Chachar was shivering with fright and ended riding far ahead to wait for the men there.
Thomas tied up the captured horses with a single rope, shifted the load among them once more. Scared Chachar was peering at every move within the bushes, listening to the sounds of live steppes. A dismal cry of jackal reached their ears from far away. It was answered by a dreary scream, full of depression and helpless malice, from the other end of the valley.
Oleg listened, then grumbled, “Fools… Which spearmen?”
“What are you talking about?” Thomas wondered.
“A fool asked whether one had seen two Franks who killed four spearmen. Another fool replied he hadn’t even seen their tracks.”
Thomas glanced at the wonderer with badly concealed fear. “That’s the power of sanctity… Of the cave erudition, I mean! Once I’ve met a monk who could swear in twelve languages, and now… er… a man who knows the tongue of jackals!”
“Which jackals? Those were villains calling to each other.”
The wonderer looked and sounded so dull that Thomas repeated in astonishment, “Vil… lains?”
“Yes, just them. Searching for us.”
Chachar gazed at the men with hope, so Thomas squared his shoulders and tapped the sword hilt, proud and arrogant. “Let them find us.”
Chapter 11
The air grew scorching, streaming like sand. As Thomas rode, his armor all but melted. Looking at the half- naked wonderer, the knight stripped it off, but that brought only little relief.
In the torrid heat, it were their horses who suffered most, so Thomas recalled what he knew of the ways of local nomads and offered, “We may ride at night! The road is even, it’s neither forest nor mountains. If you even ride with eyes closed, you won’t bump into a tree. The nights are bright, the moon is full. It’s as large as half the sky! I thought the moon was same in Britain and here but now I see it isn’t. Even stars here are different: bigger and brighter!”
Oleg did not argue, and Chachar screamed with delight. She was suffering not the heat only: dripping with sweat, as everyone was, she would sniff herself over with revulsion, rush ahead of men to every stream they encountered, wash her clothes at every occasion, stuffed her belt with bunches of grass meant to overcome, or at least absorb, the odors of steamed body.
Oleg smirked and said nothing.
In the dead of the night, he put the fire out and woke both companions ruthlessly. “You wanted it!” They got up, cursing the hard-hearted pilgrim, saddled, and rode out into the chill of the night. A huge dark dome with dense placers of stars was over their heads.
The big moon shone like a lantern of oilpaper. They could see each of the smallest pebbles and grass blades on the ground. Thomas was surprised to see they were not the first to hit upon it: lizards darted about the night steppes, turtles walked pompously and nibbled the grass. A column of big black ants crossed the way. Carefully, taking the advantage of chill, they were carrying tender pupae, as white as milk: their children wrapped in their finest silks. The scorching sun would definitely have burnt their unprotected bodies.
Thomas reined up to let them pass. Oleg watched him with surprise, as if he saw the knight for the first time. In his gleaming armor, Thomas looked like a giant ant, while the ants looked like tiny knights.
“You’ll get tired waiting,” Oleg said softly. “They’ll be marching to their Jerusalem all the night long.”
Thomas made his horse back and jump in such a way as if the two of them were a whole. One hoof hit the ground close to the black column but the small knights kept their formation.
They rode in a slow pace to save the strength of horses. In the ghostly moonlight, the lands around seemed even more wild. The remnants of ancient walls, ruins of temples, half-buried canals, thick olive groves where villains could nestle… The country is rich but garrisoned only in castles and cities with solid walls, while the roads are lorded by marauders and brigands: those sprung out in countless numbers after the bloody and strange war when mounted knights had come from the cold west, clad in their indestructible steel, swept the light Arab hosts away, started to raise thick-walled castles and spread the Christian faith around with fire and sword…
The Franks were not for making slaves and plundering: at least, they were not that blatant in it as all the conquerors before. They swore having come only to rescue the Holy Sepulcher, but once the war ended, the victorious knightly hosts came apart. Some soldiers left for their northern homelands, others became lucky brigands and marauders in this rich country, and all the ancient realm became a boiling pot of noble knights, scholar monks, highborn Saracens, assassins, astrologers, and half-savage princelings — almost any sort of man could be found here. The blossoming valleys were swept over by waves of nomads never seen there before, who performed rites so cruel and repulsive that the sight of them made even the hardiest northern warriors blanch. As the castles and cities were ruled by Franks, while Saracens held the numerous villages, the conquerors rushed to raise high walls, strengthen their gates, make grain houses and cellars big enough to endure a sack.
