The Grail of Sir Thomas

seat. They will stay there until you come and take them… and sit on the throne if you wish. No other man shall ever sit on it.”

“And you?” Thomas forced out.

“Me?” Isosnezhda smiled sadly. “I shall rule in your name. A queen waiting for her powerful defender to come back.”

Oleg grasped the reins of Thomas’s stallion with his strong hand, gave a loud whoop. The horses galloped straight away, their steel shoes thundered on the ground. The road rushed to meet them in fright, threw itself under the hooves, slipped beneath them in a flash, to sigh with relief and come to itself behind the riders.

The horses rushed in a heavy gallop until they got steamy. Oleg never glanced back. When the white city walls hid behind green hills, he allowed the tired horses to take a slow pace, then heaved a sigh. “Well, a glove and a dagger — not big loss indeed. Though certainly a pity. I hope you left your old gauntlet? The spare one you had in your bag?”

Thomas straightened up with insult. “Sir wonderer!” he said with pain. “How can you? At this moment…”

Oleg hemmed with disapproval. His eyes remained inquiring.

“An old one,” Thomas confessed reluctantly. “But the dagger was new!”

Oleg nodded. As he shifted his attention to the road ahead, his eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose. Thomas felt awkward when he understood that his caring friend was thinking where on their way to buy a three- edged narrow dagger to replace that one, and also a couple of spare gauntlets, made of mail rings and topped with plates of steel, as those iron gloves are the most frequently broken pieces of armor…

“Sir wonderer,” Thomas asked with confusion, “please don’t tell anyone we fought spiders, or I’ll be mocked at home. They won’t get it. Fools.”

There were about forty versts from Merefa to the coast of Black Sea. They set out at dawn and had a brief rest in the torrid afternoon. Oleg hoped to reach the sea by evening. If their luck was good, the next morning they could be sailing a ship: one of thousands plying along the coast, never taking a risk to go too far from the land. This way, along the shore, they would get to Constantinople in several days and part there. The noble sire knight would take the northwest road, through Serbia, Croatia, states of German and kingdoms of Frank to his Britain, while the way of Oleg the wonderer lay to the north, across the dangerous lands roamed by mounted hordes of Pechenegs, Kumans and other people of steppes…

Thomas still rode in his full armor, even in his helmet, enduring the heat and steaming, though within scores of miles around there was not a soul and, in places, no bush, only grass too low to hide a hare. Seldom they came across villages and rode past, with their noses turned up proudly: Merefans had kindly provided them with food and money enough for a year.

Even the slightest memory of Merefa made the knight’s face dark. Oleg, feeling pity for his friend, would hurry to amuse him with true occurrences and funny incidents of the lives of kings and heroes. He knew lots of such stories, and Thomas began to listen involuntarily.

Once their road came to a big city, which was being flooded with immense crowds of pilgrims. A grand temple towered majestically above the city, in the very center. The city has grown around the temple, Thomas grasped. The temple was surrounded by noisy caravansaries. Thousands of pilgrims moved in a never-ending chain, by three or four men in a row, to offer their worship to the Eternal Fire.

“It looks like that fire is really cleansing,” Thomas said with respect.

“It cleans no damned thing,” Oleg replied angrily. “Let’s go. Ride on!”

“Wait,” Thomas asked him. “I want a look at it.”

“No,” Oleg said hastily. He turned his face away as if that fire were burning his eyes. “We must hurry!”

Thomas nodded. “Your words are sweet like honey to my faithful Christian heart. Probably, you’re not a lost man. You can be brought into the bosom of the Church… on a good chain, surely. And there your mean soul shall be saved with a trifling penance imposed on you… for some couple of thousand years. But why are you so sure that Pagan fire cleans nothing? The Lord, in his unfathomable mercy, could allow…”

Oleg dropped his head, turned away, hiding his eyes, like a devil would turn from a holy crucifix. When he spoke, he sounded broken, his voice full of strange guilt and even repentance. “What if some muddler, a trainee sorcerer, a botching one, had lit that fire but failed to put it out? And here it burns… a reminder of his folly. And people… are just people. Everywhere.”

“Really?” Thomas doubted. “Could such a muddler be? That’s no muddler, that’s… I don’t even know who!”

“He could do it by accident!” Oleg snapped.

Thomas clenched his gauntleted fist. “For such a botch, I…”

Oleg heaved a sigh. Thomas looked around arrogantly. A big city that grew around the wonderful fire for centuries is noisy and boiling, a swaying sea of humans: bright and colored, loudmouthed and cheerful. They are men, though infidel. Thomas did not want all his enemies to be idiots, as that meant himself a match for them.

“Though there were woods then,” Oleg said suddenly, with strange melancholy. “Wild woods. And marshes everywhere. No sky to see, and miasmas… Let’s ride faster!”

At noon, when the scorching sun was bending them down to the ground, Oleg, bathing in sweat, pointed silently at two oaks that grew near a small stream. Like any trees in the open, they had matured with no hindrance and grew stout. Their thick branches could hide from sun or rain a big party — or a whole caravan with its camels, donkeys, and goods. Thomas’s stallion, who had been looking at Oleg with hope for a long time, turned after him eagerly before the knight touched his reins.

They were in no more than hundred steps to the oaks when a strange ragged figure came running up the slope on its fours from the stream. Shrieking shrilly, the creature fell, then got up to its hind legs, staggered two steps and fell again, just under the tree.

After it, a big animal darted out, so enormous that it took Thomas some time to recognize a bear. He ran in no hurry, the hair on his paws and belly matted, as if he was just fishing in the stream, its mouth full of sharp white teeth. The strange creature turned out to be a girl with tousled filthy hair. She pressed her back against the trunk, terrified, as she watched the animal rushing to her.

“Our Lady!” Thomas cried and lowered his visor. His stallion broke into gallop as usual. The bear gave a roar, and the destrier, though he’d been storming the Tower of David, went trembling in a broad arc to round the wild beast.

Thomas swore, hurled his lance on the ground, gripped his sword, and vaulted off. The stallion tried to gallop away, Oleg rode after it and managed to catch the frightened animal. Thomas, with bare sword in hand, ran to the bear who stood upright before the screaming girl, colossal on its hind paws, while its forepaws stretched out, as though in delight.

Seeing that he would be late, Thomas yelled, threw the sword with all his might, using it as a dart for the first time in life. The sword flew, whirling in the air, hit the bear flatwise on his back. The animal (he’d already seized its prey) recoiled with surprise at the sudden strike of heavy sword. The girl shrank back with a scream, her bare shoulders in bloody marks of the bear’s claws.

The bear wheeled round to his offender. It was no young bear who knew nothing of dogs and men: that one had evidently met hunters, knew the sharp pain of flying arrows and piercing spears. He uttered a terrible roar, which shook the air and the ground, but did not dash ahead in blind fury. Instead, he looked his enemy over with bloodshot eyes, searching for the glitter of bitter biting blade.

Thomas felt his back creepy — and regretted acutely he had neither a spear to spin the animal nor his huge two-handed sword. Here it lies! Under the bear’s thick paw, half pressed into the earth. His hands were empty, and the animal was gigantic, as he’d never seen before.

In two steps on the ground, there was a long pole with a charred and sharpened end. Thomas took a grip on its smooth wood before he grasped it was a spear: a primitive one made by a savage who’d burnt its end in the fire to harden it!

The bear sank to his fours, started coming to the knight slowly, carefully. His red eyes blazed with malice, sharp teeth glittered. Thomas, adapting to the simple weapon, kept its sharp end down, low to the ground. His cousin once removed died of wounds he received when a bear, half as large as that one, had ducked under his steel spear.