those stone hills as fast as we can!”
Waiting for no response, he gave a shriek, whipped his horse, and burst into gallop. Thomas measured the way up to the hills by anxious eyes, spurred his horse. A destrier can run in gallop no more than three or four hundred steps. The attack of heavy chivalry is only to break the enemy’s lines, not to pursue. The knights crush into the first rows, piercing the foes with lances, then get stuck, slash heavily with swords and axes, while their foamy warhorses try to keep their legs, which are trembling with tiredness.
The horse Thomas had could carry the heavy-armored rider for almost a mile, and there were less than it to the hills pointed by the wonderer… but if danger waited there, he would make a pretty nice fighter on a half-dead horse!
The horse was speeding up, turning a terrible armored beast. Thomas could see no enemy, but his heart pounded like a hammer, blood ran in vessels noisily and briskly. He warmed up, felt a fit of the sacred battle rage that some warriors had in common with ancient heroes and gods: furious Wotan, whose name meant “incensed,” battle-fervent Beowulf, Ruslan, Tor, Boromir, Aragorn…
Far ahead, the wonderer darted, like an arrow, between two low hills formed by grey granite boulders crumbling with age, topped with young green firs that reached for the sky, their strong roots completing the ruin of hills.
Only once did the wonderer glance back: to check whether the knight was following.
When Thomas’s stallion dashed between the hills — a hundred of steps from one to another! — the ground under his hooves gave a shake, a heavy rumble came from below. The horse stumbled at a tilt, lost ground, and Thomas strained in mortal fear, as he imagined himself flying heels over head in full armor. But the horse kept its hooves and mended its pace. They darted past the hill. Thomas spotted it was no hill but a ruin of very old tower or fortress… His peripheral vision caught a terrible glimpse of huge stone slabs coming apart, in smoke and thunder. The roots of young firs cracked, the ground opened wide, puffing black and grey smoke out… and within it, some monstrous, inhuman thing was rising from the bowels of earth!
He felt a blow of heat on his back. The horse wheezed in terror. The wonderer reined up far ahead, waving to Thomas. His horse pranced, eager to rush away from the scary place. “Quick!” Thomas heard a bitter shout. “You still have time!”
Thomas bent to the front arch. His horse rattled, his ears laid back as a hare’s. The wonderer turned his stallion, wrenching his lower jaw with the bridle. Thomas darted past them, only caught a glimpse of pale face and eyes goggled with despair. The road flew under the hooves evenly — a good one made by Romans! — but his horse had a rattling breath, bloodshot eyes, and the grey strip of earth was splitting into pebbles, grass, and trampled clay.
“Keep up, keep up!” Oleg cried out like a spell. He overrode Thomas again, as if there was a more terrible thing ahead and he hurried to see it first, to ward off, to protect his friend. Thomas saw the bow, sword, and arrows on Oleg’s back and his fear grew stronger:
He heard a heavy crash ahead, as if a mountain collapsed. The ground under him twitched to and fro again. A terrible roar made Thomas’s blood run cold. The roar was uttered by no animal but something dreadful, neither human nor beastly.
Thomas took a chance to glance back. He gasped, went cold, his fingers all but dropped the reins. The hill had collapsed, like a molehill, big rocks rolled down onto the road. From a huge crater, some dirty-green monsters were climbing out: each as tall as a mounted man but thrice that long, more massive, covered with bony plates that resembled stone slabs. The massive head looked like a forger, if that could be the size of a proper barrel, topped with horns and spikes, its jaws belched with black smoke, shot crimson flames out, eyes hid in the narrow slit.
The horse staggered, began to stumble. Thomas glanced back in fear. The first monster crept down, from the ruined hill onto the road, sniffed the tracks loudly and rushed, in giant leaps, after him. The other beasts were also coming: their bright-green bodies covered with duckweed from top to toe, as though they’d just come up from underground bog, each had a sharp bony crest along its back, jaws looked like a burning stove. The earth gave a moan when they dashed after the riders. Making heavy leaps, they looked like giant frogs whose bodies were stretched in a jump.
“Sir wonderer!” Thomas cried desperately. “With deep regret I inform you that you’ll have to rely only on yourself! I can’t be helpful anymore: my horse will fall in forty-eight steps…”
“Won’t he make hundred?” the wonderer bellowed, as he pulled up abruptly.
“I know my weight, my armor…”
“Then make the rest fifty-two by shanks’ mare!”
The horse rocked on the run, then fell. Thomas had taken his heavy boots out from iron stirrups, so he jumped down heavily. His tired legs failed him, he sprawled, face first, in the road mud and dust. A strong hand yanked him up by shoulder, all but wrenched it out, a horrible voice roared in his ear, “Run to that oak!”
Thomas forced himself to run as fast as he could.
The roar and crash behind grew louder. They felt heat, smelt burning. Thomas tried to pull out his sword as he ran, but Oleg’s hand hit his elbow painfully. Thomas did not object: he only tried to survive in that run. Dying on the run would be a shame to a knight who spent several years running around the castle with a heavy rock on his shoulders, as that was a common way of training young Angles…
The oak was getting closer, but everything swung and blurred in his eyes, his knees became weak. Thomas could not fall: the strong hand dragged him along. Suddenly he sank into icy cold, got stuck in it, like a fly in amber, but the wonderer yelled, pulled him ahead. With dim surprise, Thomas found himself up to the neck in water. The wonderer’s hot horse snorted and hoofed nearby, splashing Thomas all over. He seemed to hear his armor, red-hot with the mad run, hissing in the water and see the whitish steam raising.
Oleg dragged Thomas out onto the bank. “Up the slope!” he croaked, hoarse and panting with effort. “Water keeps them.”
He vaulted off, his horse remained on trembling legs, all four spread wide apart, and the two men ran on… Precisely, the wonderer started to run but then came back to seize Thomas, in his armor with water gushing out of all slits, dragged the knight, as heavy as a mountain, made him move on. Thomas often fell in exhaustion, his wet armor got caked in earth, dry leaves, splinters. A frantic wasp flew into his open visor and stung his lip.
The wonderer yelled for him to hurry. Finally, Thomas burst after him into thick green shrubs and fell down, motionless. There was a din in his head, a clatter of hammers in his ears, his heart trying to break the steel armor from inside.
The wonderer’s legs were jutting out from the bush ahead. With effort, Thomas dragged his body, as heavy as a dead armored horse, to fall next to him. The wonderer was watching the road through the twigs he’d moved apart. Thomas, faintly surprised at own endurance, managed a turn on his side, looked out too.
In hundred steps down the slope, a wide stream was gleaming in the bright sun: so shallow that one could clearly see small colored stones on its bottom, pebbles, water plants, and even small fishes, shiny in the sunlight. Thomas groaned with vexation.
On the other side of the stream, huge monsters, about ten of them, were stamping their feet, hitting each other with bone shells, bursting with mechanical roars. Thomas convulsed, dug his iron elbows deeper into the earth, clenched both his jaws and fists. Once he had seen a fire-spitting mountain: huge rocks flying out of its truncated peak, with terrible thunder, the Hell’s fire and black smoke rising from it, and the blazing earth, fiery and melted, streaming down the slope. The beasts seemed to have climbed out of that mountain, which was called volcano.
