The Grail of Sir Thomas

enough food for a week!

“Oh, how good!” Thomas said with enjoyment. “Each new day makes the road shorter and takes me closer to my snow-faced Krizhina… If no delays on the way, I’ll be on time. Even two days ahead of it!”

Oleg pointed at the tall towers blazing with crimson fire: they showed up at the very edge of their sight. “Zolochev. There we shall part.”

Thomas darkened. “Sir wonderer…” he said warily. “You are the companion I could not even dream of! Why can’t we ride together for some more time? For a week, at least?”

“If there were a way past Constantinople, we’d have parted earlier, Sir Thomas. But now all the broad space of Europe lies before us! You road goes northwest, mine turns northeast.”

“What is the name of your country?” Thomas asked in depression. “I shall tell others of the Great Scythia… er… Scythian Rus’…”

“Just say Rus’,” Oleg said again, for the countless time. “Kievan Rus’! The Red Rus’. Ah, you will forget or confuse all the same!”

Their horses, after they’d had a good rest in Constantinople, tried to break into a trot, but Oleg held them in. Thomas’s stallion bore six poods of the knight himself, two poods of his steel armor, a pood of the saddle bag, the Holy Grail and various camping thing in it, and also the horse cloth, sweat clothes, the saddle, stirrups, girths, reins… And a tired horse can hardly drag along its own ear.

Thomas all but dislocated his neck, as he turned it to watch the ruins in half a mile from the road. Being more curious than it befitted a knight, he drove his horse in gallop to them. Oleg muttered a curse but had to follow him. Any rotten thing can be found in ruins like these.

From the height of the saddle, Thomas gaped at the majestic ruins. Standing on a hill, he had a good view of the valley packed tightly with creepily gigantic remnants of palaces, city walls, grand fountains, all sticking out of the dry black soil, completely bare, with no grass growing on it. Some goats rambled at the edge of that black earth but none dared to step on it.

Thomas looked around, his glance fell on a shepherd boy. “What great people lived here?” Thomas asked him. “Which great country was it? What divine fire did destroy it?”

The shepherd boy blew his nose loudly, down to the legs of the Frank’s horse, holding each of his nostrils in turn with his thumb, wiped his palm against his dirty matted burnoose and replied gloomily, “Here sleeps my grandfather, wise Siyavush Sarhan-ogly. He knows all.”

Thomas’s eyes found the old man who was dozy in the shade. The knight rode up to him, gave a bow from the saddle. “Please tell me, wise man: what was it here?”

The old man lifted up slowly his senile eyes, full of grief and sorrow, to look at the beautiful knight. “It was the greatest of cities… With its people wealthy, healthy, and beautiful. They had everything to be happy. But while a poor man only cares of food, the one who has plenty of it seeks a nourishment for mind and soul… Unfortunately, a false prophet was passing across this land. Be damned into ages of ages the very name of Einastia! It was how he called his teaching… You see, Frank, what remained of the blooming city. And from that whole country, whose name is now lost and forgotten.”

Thomas heard a move behind: Oleg turned his horse and darted away in gallop. So pale and scared he looked that Thomas rushed after him, having forgotten at once the shepherds, ruins, and the Einastia itself. “Is your head aching from the sun? Drink some water! Let’s get into the shade, for you to lie down and have some rest!”

“No,” a hoarse groan came from the very depth of the wonderer’s chest. “Let’s go… away from here.”

They failed to reach Zolochev by night: the darkness caught them in a poor village. They spent a night there. In the morning, they watered horses, checked the horseshoes, and rode onto the road. Thomas smiled with restraint: in the short day before, they made over twenty miles. The horse will get tired over time, but even fifteen miles a day will bring me to the bank of Don with five or six days in reserve.

Early in the morning, they bumped into ancient ruins again. Thomas knew those lands bore marks of many extinct cities and nations: he saw many of them before, but none were that colossal. With glassy eyes, he gazed at the monstrous slabs. “How?.. Tell me, how could they break off such boulders? And drag them here, to the heart of desert?.. You see, no stone quarries close here!”

Oleg, grey and hunched in his saddle, looked ahead with glassy eyes. His face showed despair, his wrinkles got sharper, and the manly lines near his mouth turned bitter. “So they could…” he whispered.

“But how?” Thomas exclaimed. He felt his hair raising the helmet with such a force that its belt was about to wrench his lower jaw. “How? The stones I trimmed were hundred times smaller than these ones, but even those were a fit for giants! I saw hundred slaves harnessed in to drag each one: more hands that belts for them to seize!”

A dirty boy, clad in only a faded, colorless loincloth, gaped at the two mighty Franks. “Do you know what it was?” Thomas asked.

The boy shook his head, but as he saw the mighty iron Frank watching him with expectation, he said shyly, “A damned place.”

“Why?”

“Einastia,” the boy answered. He backed and got white, as he spoke out this terrible word. “It’s Einastia!” He ran away, showing a dirty pair of heels.

Thomas followed him with puzzled eyes. “It seems to me I’ve heard of this doctrine before… But then, if I recall it right, they ruined and destroyed everything… and here they were building until they worked their guts out and perished… No. I must have confused!”

“Certainly you must,” Oleg agreed hastily, “as you have travelled a lot. Tell me, how did your detachment storm into the gate of Jerusalem?”

Thomas livened up, the majestic slabs forgotten at once. He assumed a dignified air: his back straightened up, his chest well out, straightening the caved armor. “Sir wonderer, that was a battle!.. A battle to tell our grandchildren or even great-grandchildren of, as the courage and valor of both the defenders of the Holy Sepulcher and the brave warriors who came to take it is unlikely to be surpassed soon!”

The wonderer did not seem a quite attentive listener, but Thomas was not petty and told the story willingly, in detail. Gradually, Oleg mellowed. He even seemed to be looking in the knight’s handsome manly face with joy, but then frowned, gripped his charms.

“Wasn’t it my smile in all hundred teeth to fright you?” Thomas mocked.

“It was,” Oleg replied briefly.

“Why?” Thomas alerted.

“You are too merry, and trouble always comes unexpected… and, for some strange reason, always at the height of fun. And teeth… you have only thirty-two of them, by the way.”

“So little?” Thomas was surprised. “I’d never think… I’m a knight, however. My business is to knock teeth out in jousting, not to count them. Let the literary men count, as their academies taught them to…”

With light heart, he overrode the wonderer. Back in Constantinople, he had slayed a fiend, an adept of Evil, one of the knights of Satan. Who would dare to impede his triumphant homecoming?

Oleg rode behind. Thomas kept glancing back at him until his neck got sore. The wonderer grew darker and darker, he let not the charms out of his fingers. At last, Thomas felt the familiar creepy cold and got anxious. “Sir wonderer, haven’t we got done with it in Constantinople? We defeated such a mighty helper of Devil that souls in heaven frisk and sing praises to us! What else?”

“I don’t know,” Oleg replied reluctantly. “I feel danger, a great danger, but can’t fathom… no idea at all where it may come from.”

Thomas glanced at the Pagan charms with Christian indignation. Though they had saved their souls more than once, giving a timely warning, but still they were Pagan, impious things! If I could learn to tell fortunes by the cup, or the nail in my sword hilt, there would probably be omens from Our Lady. Far more reliable and, which is most important, Christian ones.

“You have almost nothing but beasts,” he remarked, casting jealous glances at the charms. “Wolves, bears, even dragons. And people so ugly… Some toads, birds, fish — what for? And only one sword! And one stirrup, as it never happens to be…”

Oleg gave a sudden start, as though waking from a bad dream, looked around wildly. His eyes widened in fear, as if he saw some monster springing up on their way. “Sir Thomas! Sir Thomas, we need to pass between