“Secret Seven,” the wonderer said with unbearable bitterness. “Unchain these monsters! A savagery.”
“Secret Six now,” Thomas replied as firmly as he could. “Where were they chained?”
“There below. In the times of old gods, these beasts lived on earth, as numerous as rabbits… Then heroes destroyed them. The first Secret One hid the remaining ones inside a rocky mountain.”
“For such an occasion?”
“Just to save them from extinction. He didn’t think much of it, just saved… The first Secret Ones were powerful sorcerers, always at war with great heroes, the founders of new tribes and nations.”
“The Secret Ones have always been demons?”
Oleg hesitated, looked slantwise in the knight’s honest face, then turned away, replied reluctantly, as though forcing himself, “Wars would not last that long… and not begin that often either if only one side were right. Have you had a rest?”
“I need two or three years of it…” Thomas said in a miserable voice.
“Stand up, Sir Thomas! Your beautiful Krizhina is waiting. The beasts are slow-minded, but soon they’ll guess to fell that giant oak. Beavers would have already guessed that! Then they’ll drag it here and throw across the water to reach the other bank.”
Oleg rose, and Thomas, with a groan, got up to his trembling feet. Oleg watched him with admiration and sympathy: the knight had not taken the smallest of iron pieces off, but carried two poods of steel on himself and the heavy two-handed sword steadfastly!
“Why can’t they cross… as we did?” Thomas asked in a choking voice.
“Born in a hot desert. The ancient one, so scorching that… Here they are freezing, Sir Thomas! Really freezing!”
Thomas who was dying of heat gave a sob of either exhaustion or envy for the animals who were cold, dragged himself after the wonderer. They forced their way through shrubs, climbed up a long rocky slope, then hurried across a steep hillside. Tired, Thomas kept bumping into huge boulders, his armor thundered, as though he were falling from the wall of the patrician house down onto the stone-paved street in Constantinople. He hissed with helpless rage, like a furious snake. “Where we run?”
“Save your breath!” The wonderer broke through the green thicket, held the branches for Thomas. He forgot that the knight’s armor was impenetrable even for sabers and spears and the visor was down to save his eyes from sharp twigs. The ground was trembling beneath Thomas, as though it were one of the beasts running, about to jump on Oleg’s shoulders.
Thomas breathed hoarsely, like a winded horse, his lips in yellow foam. Stumbling at every step, he groped for the sword hilt and rattled out, “Sir… wonderer… I… stay…”
“Run!”
There was a sudden terrible roar behind, then a heavy strike. The ground vibrated, they heard a fast crackle of shrubs and trees. Oleg grabbed Thomas, dragged him on, pushing and kicking, through the thickset up the slope. “They’ve crossed!”
“I shan’t…” Thomas forced out. “They’ll come up… I saw their paws… Better fight with honor… Face to face…”
“If only you could! Swords do no harm to them!”
“I’m k-knight… Unworthy… like hare…”
“Sir Thomas, fortify your heart! The run is courageous, and the fight cowardly!”
Thomas did not get it: his head was pounding again. Beyond himself, urged on by the wonderer, he dragged his feet to the crest of a hill, long alike a lizard. Far below, a broad road curved round its foot, a column of red dust driven along by wind. Across the road, there was a yellow wall of ripe wheat, and along the way, just near the foot of the hill, on which the travelers stood half-dead, some pilgrims were plodding, in rows by two or three: ragged, half-naked or in torn cloaks, with heads shaved or overgrown with long hair.
“If you don’t want Krizhina to cry her eyes out, run to them!” Oleg breathed out in a parched voice.
“But I don’t…” Thomas felt a strong shove on back, made two steps involuntarily, lest he fall, and got dragged on, as though by a rope: trees and shrubs rushed to meet him, he moved his legs very quickly, in fear of ramming into a thick tree or stumbling over a stone. He clutched at branches as he ran, but adequate bushes seemed to be left behind, and those he met were feeble, easy-tearing like rotten cloths, leaving green twigs in his hands. The twenty-three stones of his bone, muscle, and steel dashed down the slope like an avalanche. He stifled again with heat and flicker in his eyes, started to dream of bumping into a tree, or even a boulder as tall as himself…
The greenery finished abruptly, he darted in the dust. His legs failed to bear up the body that suddenly got heavier, the ground jumped to meet him, he clashed face to face with it, heard a crunch and a crackle, felt hot and salty in his mouth, as he was rolled and, finally, sprawled in the hot dust.
When he looked up madly, a shaggy old man was standing before him: with a spade-like beard, clad in a tattered cloak, all in patches and rents, an iron chain over his shoulder, each link the size of a hand, its end dragged in the road dust. “What a wonder is it?” the old man asked in a startled voice.
Thomas set both hands on the ground, sat up with effort. He felt a stitch under his ribs, shook his head, trying to regain his senses.
A heavy body was rolling down swiftly from the steep slope, crushing through shrubs. Thomas heard a scream, “In the name of Great Rod! Of Christ, Buddha, Mahomet, Wotan and all the gods! Help!!!”
Oleg jumped onto the road, with his eyes goggled madly, soaked and shaggy all over, like a mouse thrown ashore by the surf. The old man patted sedately his grey beard, luxuriant, though with burdocks and burrs in it, shot a sharp glance from under his overhanging prickly eyebrows. “If we can… What’s the matter?”
“We are chased!”
“In this world they always chase someone. Come to ours.”
“I was in it,” Oleg said quickly. His broad chest was heaving wildly, he kept glancing over his shoulder. “Now I’m in the Great Reclusion.”
His fingers made a strange sign: so fast that Thomas could not see it, but the old man’s eyes widened. The pilgrim bowed his head — unwillingly, as Thomas spotted — and spoke in a different tone, “We recognize… But we are still in the Small Reclusion, which, as you know, prescribes to leave mundane affairs behind.”
“A special case!” Oleg cried. He glanced over again, with fright. A hollow rumble was heard from that side, the ground was quivering.
The old man spoke back strictly, in a rattling voice that seemed derisive to Thomas. “For you? Temptation has many faces, you know… We left mundane deeds behind.”
A mighty roar came from behind the crest, then a crackle of broken shrubs. Big rocks flew down the slope onto the road, ahead of the monsters who’d brought them down.
Thomas rose to his weak feet, drew out his sword and stood at the roadside. “Sir wonderer! Haven’t we fought just in two?”
Oleg cast an incensed look at the old man, behind whom the silent pilgrims stood in a dense crowd, their eyes dull and lackluster, their thin swarthy hands clutching thick staffs. The wind stirred their rags with disgust. Thomas smelt unwashed bodies, wrinkled his noble nose, and moved away to the very edge of the road.
“Yes,” Oleg sighed. “Our last battle, Sir Thomas!” He pulled his huge sword out slowly, walked tiredly up to Thomas. The knight looked slantwise in his companion’s sad face.
The ground trembled. The green cover of the hill vanished, as the grey-green wave rolled over it. There was crackle and crash, stones dropped. What the monsters left behind, was black friable soil: no shrubs on it anymore, all twigs and even leaves gone, trampled into the ground along with rocks.
Thomas planted his feet wider apart, gave Oleg a cheering-up glance — the last one in that life! — gripped the sword with both hands. The monsters rushed down from the mountain, unstoppable. Only one of them spotted the knight’s gleaming figure on the way, mistook it for an iron pillar dug into the earth, tried to halt, setting its paws
