The Grail of Sir Thomas

keep him from a furious lung. The cleft was dark. They heard marauders speaking in angry, irritated voices. “Keep a vigilant watch,” Oleg told them in a warning tone. “Over the rocks and bushes. Memorize their positions.”

A dark figure turned to him. When the man spoke, Oleg recognized the voice of Roland, the leader of marauders. “I know such tricks. They won’t steal up.”

“See to no one sleeping on the watch!”

Roland hemmed. His reply sounded a bitter irony. “Everyone heard of Hazars. A bit at least. Who can sleep when his hair stands on end?”

Oleg turned away from him. “Let no one try to get out alone!” Thomas added in a peremptory tone of a lordly knight.

Roland laughed. “If anyone nursed such idea, he trampled and grinded it by now!”

Oleg saw their faces, white in the dark. Woken up by the hushed voices, people looked at him with hope. He adjusted the bow and the quiver on his back, checked his knives. “I’ll go and have a close look at their camp.”

Thomas gasped. “But how you… get there? You’ve said we are surrounded. They sit behind every stone. A fly won’t pass!”

“There are no flies at night,” Oleg replied indifferently. “Only gnats… Sir Thomas, I’m not a steel-thundering knight, nor a villain. Slavs are taught as children to steal up to an animal! A child grasps a wild goose, an adult can jump on the back of the keenest deer… When coming back, I’ll give a whistle, so you won’t shoot me in case if you hear my steps.” He backed and vanished in the night. Thomas, Gorvel and all the rest listened tensely, watched the starry sky closely, but no star vanished behind a moving figure, no twig snapped, no pebble clicked.

A scatter of smooth stones looked like a herd of giant turtles frozen in the chill of the night. The sentinels kept counting the largest rocks. The Black Beard shot two arrows in a boulder that seemed suspicious to him and saw it sinking a bit, changing its shape slightly. When the moon came out again from behind a cloud, the boulder was not in place.

Oleg moved in the night, as silent as a bat. In times stopped, pressed against the ground, smelled unwashed bodies and horse sweat, listened to the creaks of belts and breath of men. Once he made out a full picture, to the smallest detail, he moved on, slipping past Hazars in their hide. There were not two scores of barbarians around their refuge, as Oleg had supposed, but twice that number, or even more. Karganlyk was so craving to get the Holy Grail that he’d sent half his tribe to guard, for no one to slip out, to crawl away, to dig into burrows.

As Oleg lay on the rocks, he listened to jackals roaming around the Hazar camp. A skilled hunter reads the voices of animals as easily as their tracks, so Oleg, still being far from the camp, knew that there were no more than hundred Hazars and twice that number of horses, three bonfires, six killed rams, and human flesh cooked on spits: Hazars, unlike Khazars, used to eat not only dead enemies but their own dead too.

He slipped down into the valley, started stealing up to the bonfires. He stopped dead at the strange sounds: mumbles and measured trample, as if several men were making a gloomy ritual dance. Oleg sneaked closer and saw, against the starry sky, a massive wooden cross, a white body on it. The poor man was crucified. The villain who tried to escape alone. Oleg recognized the dark stripes on his body at once: they were where Hazars had cut the man’s skin off to make their belts of it. The villain’s mouth was gagged tightly. They don’t want his voice to get hoarse before time. They would let him shriek as much as he wished in the morning, for Oleg and his small party to see and hear what awaited for them.

Four Hazars were stamping on the soft ground around the cross dug into, driving stones and wedges under its base. Dark blood was streaming down the cross. The villain’s feet were set against the ground, otherwise the nails couldn’t have kept his body. Hazars had not only cut belts of him: they maimed the bottom of his belly, pulled out his male parts.

Noiselessly, Oleg took his bow off, emptied the arrows on the ground. He hesitated for a while and laid down a throwing knife too, though it was hard to shoot an arrow while lying and throwing a knife was even worse.

He loosed the first arrow after a thorough aim-taking. Then he’d snatch the next one by feather hastily, draw in a flash, shoot and grasp another arrow at once. The first Hazar was shot in throat, two more — in heads before they could cry, but the fourth one had time to see the glitter of arrowhead in the dark. He jumped aside, a saber flashed in hand.

Oleg threw the knife with force. The Hazar fell, the hilt stuck out of his left eye socket. Oleg caught the body, flinched at the blood pouring over him, put it noiselessly on the ground.

From the Hazar camp, he heard common sounds of any nomad camp where half of men are awake, whetting their swords, putting heads on their arrows and spears, while the sentinels mostly watch the bonfires and meat on spits.

He wiped the throwing knife clean, tucked it in place. While he ran around the cross and gathered his arrows, he kept listening to the sounds of noisy Hazar camp. He approached cautiously, flinching at every chirr of grasshoppers. There was no suspicious noise, no signs of alarm, and Oleg breathed out with great relief. At the blaze of farther bonfires, he saw many Hazars drinking heavily the befuddling soma, chewing death caps. Their faces twitched, contorted, froze in awful grimaces.

He was looking out for Karganlyk when someone pushed him on back. “Why ramble in dark?” an angry voice said in the spoiled tongue of Eastern Khazars who had turned Hazars. “Carry the wood–”

Oleg wheeled round, pulling out his knife. Two Hazars glared at him, the third one behind them was dragging a dry log with effort. Oleg kicked the first Hazar in groin. At the same time, the knife vanished from hand to appear as a hilt stuck in the throat of the second enemy. Oleg jumped on the third Hazar who dropped the log and goggled his eyes in fear. He let out a terrible yell that stopped abruptly with a shrill sob.

Oleg dashed aside, fell, rolled over his head and stopped dead, sprawling on the ground, his ear pressed on it. He heard screams at the camp, a loud clatter of hooves. Someone darted across the fire, scattering hot coals. The sleeping Hazars were jumping up with dreadful yells, in burning clothes. Only those befuddled by soma and death caps did not stir.

Oleg cast anxious glances at the dark sky. The light spot of moon vanished in fast running clouds in time, but another time it shone through them too brightly, threatening to fall out into the clear sky. He would be exposed then!

He ran off a bit, crouched, watching and listening to know who was where, how many of them, where they headed. Karganlyk did not show up, though Oleg heard his stentorian roar twice. He started to sneak there but soon heard the leader’s voice from another side, as if Karganlyk had felt the danger and was hiding or trying to decoy Oleg into ambush.

The turmoil went on. They found the bodies and are combing the valley through! Oleg started a quiet retreat to the mountain. Warned by the trample of hooves or feet beforehand, he fell on the ground each time, merged into its hummocks, pretended to be a boulder. One Hazar was too fast to come upon him, no time to dodge. Oleg had to punch him on head to stun.

Thomas and Gorvel were awake, peering at the far bonfires. In two steps, the Black Beard was scuffing with concentration, as he whetted his curved sword, checked it carefully with his nail, as thick as a hoof, and moved the rough whetstone lovingly on the blade again.

“You friend is a man of great courage,” Gorvel remarked at last. “A civilized man would never take such a risk, but he’s a Pagan, as those wild Hazars are. He’s a match for them.”

“He has enough civilization and enough culture,” Thomas snapped. “He knows the Holy Writ, though he doesn’t appreciate it. Sometimes it seems to me he has met all the great prophets in person: so profound his knowledge of their words and their ideas!”

“Then his soul belongs to Satan,” Gorvel told him with confidence. “Are you sure he’s not Satan himself? Or one of his servants? Not the least of them! Some things he does… I wonder whether they are possible for any man.”

Thomas pondered over it, then his face lit. “He held the Holy Grail in hands! And it can’t be touched by one with foul intents. By the way… Can you take it?”

Gorvel turned away. He stared into the dark for a long time. The reply he gave afterwards sounded steady and confident, as if he felt great powers behind. “I treat the cup of Christ’s blood with too much respect to lay dirty fingers on it. Once I’m back to my castle… either old or new one… a priest will absolve me of all my sins, however small. Then I’ll take it.”

“That will be a long confession,” Thomas said. “You’ll get old before you finish it!”

Chachar tossed anxiously in her sleep under Thomas’s cloak, whispered something. Thomas walked aside