away/”
“I have to smash Baron’s head before!”
“Then we’ll be seized. Speed is the rescue.”
“But the cup must be in his bedroom! He’s no fool to keep it elsewhere. I’d rather die than leave it!”
The wonderer watched him with a strange expression, then sighed, tossed and thrashed heavily in the stone corner. “Man is reckless… Isn’t it a simple Truth?”
“Ho-ly won-de-rer!” Thomas spoke in measured tones. He choked with fury, veins in his neck bulged, the metal collar strangling him like Baron’s iron fingers. “Will you help me?”
The wonderer had big, mild, all-forgiving eyes.
“Will you help?” Thomas moaned.
“A little,” Oleg replied in a quiet voice. “Don’t expect much.”
Chapter 3
All the next day Thomas stood in the full blaze of the sun tied to a post in the middle of the yard. His clothes were torn off. The servants laughed, threw leftovers at him. The burning Saracen sun was driving him mad. Bugs and flies swarmed his bleeding wounds, his eyes, nostrils and ears, fresh wales on his back. Thomas swore, then roared like a bull until his voice got hoarse and his head dropped on his chest. He could only moan then. His legs gave way, so he hung on the bounds. They cut into his flesh tightly, made it blue.
Oleg hoped Thomas would be brought to the barn, but the night came and the poor knight was still not there. Tired stone-breakers gobbled their meal. Twice they fought near the food caldron for a slice of meat, then everyone collapsed on pitches of rotten hay. Soon Oleg heard snoring, rattling breath, groans of pain.
He listened to the sounds outside, approached the gate. Behind those oaken folds banded with thick iron, two soldiers had to be guarding all the night long.
Without looking at the chink between folds, through which the iron bar could be seen, Oleg grabbed the edge with his left hand, his right one set against the crossbeam. He strained and began to lift the fold, his knuckles scraped against the stone gatepost. The massive hinges creaked faintly, the gate bar moved with a grind.
With gritted teeth, he bent every effort to lift the massive fold, his eyes fixed on the glittering pole coming out slowly of the rusty hinges. The wooden edge almost touched the stone vault.
Suddenly, the pole slid out. Oleg hardly kept the fold in hands. Holding his breath, he put it down carefully and listened. The yard was quiet as the barn was: the heavy sleep had overcome exhausted slaves. As a breath of fresh night air came in through the wide slit, some of them tossed uneasily and groaned.
Oleg squeezed himself quietly between the stone wall and the fold taken off hinges. The broad courtyard looked empty. He heard horses snort in distant stables, their hooves knock on a wooden fence. In the moonlight he saw a tethering post in the middle of the yard.
The castle had its lights on. He caught a glimpse of a man’s figure, big and round-headed, against the curtain in the fourth, topmost floor. In the next window, a woman’s head was seen for a moment, her golden hair lit by a torch from behind looked ominously red, until some long dark hands seized her by white shoulders and pulled away. The silk curtains were drawn at once.
Oleg sneaked in the shadow along the wall. For a moment, it seemed to him that once he had been sneaking the same way, in the same rags, emaciated…
He waved unnecessary thoughts away, picked a stone, tossed it up to feel its weight, sides, roughness. The warden’s stone hut was dark ahead, a drowsy guard sitting on the threshold. Oleg passed by him tip-toe and climbed the wall, clutching at the juts of rough stones.
On the top of the wall, he lay down, lest they see him against the stars, listened. Finally, he heard a faint rustle, as if a leather sole shuffled on top of the wall in three or four steps. The sound did not repeat but Oleg had detected the shadowed guard by it. He took the stone out, weighed it in hand. He had never missed a mark in five steps before.
He ran tip-toe, making no more noise than a moon ray, and saw the guard better: big, broad-shouldered and young, in a glittering helmet and a mail with shimmering iron plates. He leaned on the wall drowsily, with half- closed eyes, but if he raised his head a bit his eyes would have met Oleg’s.
Oleg prepared to hurl the stone. He knew he would not miss but a strange weakness fettered his muscle.
Oleg ran to him noiselessly, tips of his toes barely touched the stone. He punched the helmet, it crunched, the boy went slipping down the wall. Oleg caught him, put down into the corner. The dark blood gushed from under the helmet, spilt hot on his hands. Oleg clenched his teeth. He did not expect this, out of the habit to use violence in his cave.
Feeling guilty, he took the sword belt off the body, unsheathed the knife and tucked into his belt backwards, in Scythian way. A cloud hid the moon for a moment. He sneaked along briskly, getting used again to the weight of sword on his left.
The yard remained empty, its broad ill-fitted paves and dented stone stairs flooded with moonlight. The walls were formed by solid stone slabs while broken pieces were used to cobble the courtyard. The place was all stone, from top to bottom: the keep, walls, towers, slave cellars, even the yard…
He stopped dead, his eyes examined the dark stone buildings. Baron built in a hurry to fortify in the unfriendly land, men in his stone quarry dropped like flies, but everything is durable, made for ages… and following a familiar pattern. According to that canon, the torture chamber was placed straight under the keep, for the lord to visit his treasury and cellar with his most dangerous — or expensive — prisoners without stepping outdoors.
Oleg took in the castle at a glance, estimated the thickness of walls, the location of windows and rooms. His intuition pointed at a small guarded window at the ground level. The yard was still empty, the moon covered by a shaggy cloud, so he adjusted the sword belt, ran along the top of the wall and kneeled, ready to slip down into the dark.
Huge inhuman hands emerged from the darkness on his left. Oleg was late to stir away: strong fingers had grasped his neck. He gave no cry of pain and astonishment only because his throat was squeezed. He felt lifted up in the air. His head jerked back almost at the point of breaking the neck. Another monstrous hand hit Oleg’s arm, the one with the sword he managed to draw out despite pain. The sword disappeared, with a brief flash in the moonlight.
His arm got numb of the heavy blow. Through pounding in ears, he listened to hear steel tinkle on the stone but it was quiet as if the sword fell into a haycock. Gasping, he grabbed the fingers on his throat but could not remove them: his right arm was dangling. His was getting weak quickly. With a soft growl, the monster pressed him to the tower wall. The moon came out, and Oleg felt deadly cold, as he found himself in the grasp of a fierce grinning troll!
Wheezing, Oleg kicked the tower wall to push off. He flung away together with his enemy who stopped on the very brisk of the wall, his foot hung off. The monstrous teeth snapped straight before Oleg’s eyes, but the fingers unclenched: the troll had no wish to fall down on the stones, even with prey in his clutch. Staggering, Oleg rubbed his throat, backed two steps and jumped down briskly on the lower cross-wall, visible in the moon light.
His trembling legs failed him. He fell, everything went dark with pain, as his injured arm was pressed down. He rose hastily, gasping still. The troll could have killed him from an ambush, with a sword or a hammer-like fist, but the beast loathed people, he craved to see the agonizing face of a man seeing his death and trembling with
