The Grail of Sir Thomas

Oleg picked the cup from the puddle of wine and blood, shook it off and put on the windowsill. Suddenly he heard a groan. A recollection made him dash to the locked closet. A short iron tail of the crossbow bolt was stuck in the thick wooden door, in the very middle of it, the oak board splintered with that mighty strike. The tail was looking up, as if the bolt were shot from the ceiling.

“Helen!” Oleg cried anxiously. “It’s all over!”

Hurriedly, he removed the bar, opened the door. He felt it too heavy, that was wrong. Helen all but hung on it: she was span with a bolt. Trying to miss not a single word, she had pressed against the door. When the crossbowman pushed the trigger, his iron bolt went, with a terrible force, through both the dead wood and the live body made for kisses…

With disgust, Oleg looked over the room: it was spilled over with blood and wine. Corpses, broken furniture… The crossbowman did his best to pretend dead. Oleg heard his quiet sigh behind when the young woman, bathed in hot blood, fell out from the closet. A stinker. He grasped her life had been taken by his hand… Though not his will.

He threw the blanket off the bed, took his strong lamellar bow, selected one of the three special arrows in his quiver. That one was iron, more of a short spear than an arrow: large as a dart and thick as a finger, with a head of tempered steel. He rummaged in the bag for a thick rope of very durable fabric: in that land, it was called silk. The worms who spin these wonderful fibers must have a good appetite.

He heard heavy steps behind the door, as if a stone pillar were walking, then a strong cheerful voice. “Sir wonderer, don’t sock on my head!”

Thomas stepped into the room, reeled and shrunk back. His back slammed the door shut, his blue eyes widened. “Sir wonderer!.. What’s that?”

“A different way of entertainment.”

“Sir wonderer…” Thomas said again. He twisted his head round madly. “It’s not a monkish way! I mean, not a way of men like you. You have more to do with prayers, fasts…”

“My prayers did for them,” Oleg grunted as he tied the rope hastily to the arrow. “Be sure they’ll have a very long fast! Even that one, who’s just acting a sham beetle…”

Thomas walked round the bodies with disgust, on tiptoe, gripped the crossbowman’s neck, slapped on the back of his head with other hand. There was a click. Oleg nodded with approval: the punch with iron fist made the crossbowman’s soul pass out of the body for some half an hour, enough time to get far away.

“Four,” Thomas grumbled, “and the woman, poor thing… You could earn a knighthood, sir wonderer! Though a noble origin is required, you could figure out something. Find somebody among your ancestors, as they do everywhere…”

“I’ll do without it,” Oleg replied, “but thank you for the idea all the same. Prop up the door with beds. In the closet, there’s a chest with stones. Drag it here!”

“Are we to hold a defense?” Thomas asked with distrust.

“Yes. Like on the Tower of David.”

“Isn’t they all here?”

“More to come,” Oleg assured. “We must run, sir knight.”

Thomas straightened up with pride, his armor made a grating sound. “Sir wonderer, I ask you!” he snapped with dignity. “A knight never runs.”

“Well, to retreat. To withdraw, if you like it. We have to win, haven’t we?”

“Sometimes a fine death is worth more than a puny victory!”

“It’s not the case,” Oleg assured and tightened the knot. Thomas’s eyes goggled, his eyebrows flew up to hid under the helmet. The arrow is giant, unbelievable, the rope tied not on its end, where the feathering should be, but on its middle where a circular furrow in iron is seen.

Oleg drew the bow with effort, Thomas saw the bulging bumps of his monstrous muscle. For the first time, he thought with doubt whether he could draw such a bow. Fortunately I’m a knight and have nothing to do with this inhuman weapon. My codex bounds me to be noble even to mortal enemies. “Are we going to hunt elephants?”

Oleg did not reply. He sat down on the windowsill, kicked the shutters open. Heavy steps were heard from the corridor. Oleg smiled faintly: just in time. The thirty cutthroats whom Fish had threatened him with were not in the street at that moment but walking upstairs, searching the landings, and the best ones coming up to the door…

Chapter 23

Thomas barred the door, dragged the heavy chest out with a thunder, sneezing of dust, , propped up the door with it, piled up the broken fragments of the table, heavy banks and chairs. Oleg laid the coiled rope on the broad windowsill next to him. He smelled the dirty air below, heard a clatter of hooves dying away. Across the wide street, there was a tall gloomy building with lights in three of its guarded windows.

“Sir wonderer!” Judging by the knight’s face, as grey as ashes, he grasped where his strange friend was going to shoot a bolt. His weakened fingers unclenched, the sword all but slipped out of the iron hand.

Oleg drew the bow string with force, aimed. His face went crimson, his teeth flashed in a grimace of torment. Thomas heard a ringing click against the leather glove: the wonderer had put it on providently. The heavy bolt vanished, the rope started to uncoil rapidly.

In perfect silence, both heard a barely audible, distinct ringing sound of broken glass. At once, the wonderer seized the end of the rope and pulled. There was a loud knock on the door, an impatient hoarse shout. “Hey, Fish!.. Antonio, Opudalo!..”

Thomas took his sword with both hands, stood near the door. The wonderer stretched the rope, tied its end quickly to the hook that fastened the shutters to the windowsill. They heard an impatient bang on the door. The bar cracked, the heads of thick nails moved out of their sockets.

Oleg jumped off the windowsill, put on his wide baldric with a huge sword hastily, snatched the bag. “Sir Thomas! You first!”

Thomas was squatting at the side of the door, his legs half-bent, as if in ride, his sword raised overhead. The knight’s eyes were fixed on the bending board of the door, pieces of dry paint and small splinters flying sideways from it. In the corridor, there were harsh voices, clang of steel, trample of heeled boots.

“Sir Thomas,” Oleg called again in an angry whisper, “even the Holy Virgin would have commanded retreat. Why the hell she’d need a dead knight? She doesn’t know what to make of him live! Your life’s worth less than a damned thing, I agree, but who will take your cup to Britain then? I have no need of it. And who will marry Krizhina?”

Thomas shifted his perplexed gaze between the wonderer and the door shaking and bending like a sail. Oleg seized him by elbow, dragged to the window. Thomas looked out and recoiled, as though kicked by a horse between his eyes. The night was pitch-dark, the lit end of the rope — so thin! — disappeared in the creepy dark only seven feet below. A fathomless pit! Several floors to fell down to the earth, and no soft grass below, only the street paved tightly with stone slabs, a fool he was to admire it the day before…

Oleg looked back angrily, as he heard the heavy pounding. With a ringing sound, the bar flew out of hinges, crashed down in the middle of the room. Oleg tore his belt off, made Thomas climb on the windowsill, fastened the belt quickly on both him and the rope. “Quick!” he hissed. “Or we’ll die, like Sveys without butter…”

Thomas peered into the scary darkness with fear. He had been standing on the brink of abyss before: on the Tower of David, the tall wall of Jerusalem, but that was in a fury of storm, a fever of battle… and in a sunny day, after all! His muscle began to turn water, his knees bent, unable to bear the weight of armor.

Oleg hurried him, pushed on his back. “Quick! Move it! They’re breaking in!”

“Sir wonderer… And you?”

“I’ll follow!”

Thomas hurried to climb down from the windowsill, feeling his courage and manly strength back to him. “Sir wonderer, I am insulted! The duty of any warrior, a knight in particular, is to protect civilian people. And you are a priest, though I hate your faith!”