The Grail of Sir Thomas

to dry their clothes after they got caught in a short bitter shower.

In one day’s ride before Saltov, they stopped for night in a beautiful cypress grove. Their horses stayed with them. The place looked like a wonderful garden, with well-groomed apple, pear, peach, and pomegranate trees in the middle of it. Oleg pointed at a heap of colossal stones and explained that some dozen years before there used to be a luxurious summer palace of a high lord, with a rich orchard and flower garden. Once there had been music and songs and children playing, but one could hardly survive that bloody time if he stayed far from thick city walls and their brutal garrisons.

Thomas insisted on his standing the night watch, as he was a man of battle and soldier’s duty, while sir wonderer was a private man and priest: though a great hero, but all the same a member of the respectable estate that needs protection. So he should sleep by the fire, while Thomas, a hero who stormed the Tower of David, would guard and feast his eyes on stars. Each the size a fist, unlike the stars in his homeland: no larger than snowflakes frozen on the pale northern sky!

Oleg went to sleep, laughing silently. The hardest time to stay awake is before dawn, and he was going to change the selfless knight then. And now let him watch the southern sky. He will hardly get out of his northern Land of White Wolves again soon… Or his Tin Isles… Britain… Saxon Anglia…

As Thomas sat by the fire, he sometimes tossed dry branches in it. With love and care, he moved the whetstone by the steel edge of the sword he had on his knees, fingered it from the sharp point to the cross-shaped handle. Fitted into the base of the hilt by the skilled armorer (who had also fixed Thomas’s breastplate and shoed his horse), there was the nail: red with Savior’s blood, its head flattened. The nail was crooked but wonder- working: every time Thomas thought of it, he felt a tremble in his body, then a burst of energy.

Slowly, he struck the rough stone along the sharp edge. His long sword could cut the iron handle of a mace or cleave a steel helmet, but the curved Saracen sabers he had encountered on the East could cut a pillow in two halves! A good Saracen saber was obliged to slash a light veil and a woman’s thinnest hair. To his shame, Thomas felt more and more love for the elegant Saracen weapons. His English sword seemed rough as a hammer in comparison with those.

He moved the whetstone carefully, brought the blade closer to fire to take a good look at it. There was a rustle. In a flash, Thomas recoiled from the fire, gripped the sword hilt, but his eyes were blinded by the blazing fire, bright sparkles floated before them in the dark. Tardily, he recalled the wonderer had never sat his vigil face to fire.

Someone struck his head, like an anvil, from behind. Hot fires blazed up in his eyes. Thomas rose, brandished his sword, but a heavy creature jumped on his back, struck again, and Thomas lapsed into the dark.

Through the pounding of blood in his ears, he heard voices. The dark sky dome with big stars was the same, the fire had burnt down a bit, crackling with coals. Dark figures emerged and vanished in the red semi-dark, iron clanged, shrubs snapped. He could see no horses but heard them snorting.

A gloomy face emerged from the dark to hang over Thomas, a broad face with prominent cheekbones. The man’s eyes, gleaming with excitement, examined his captive quickly. His lips moved apart, baring yellow dented teeth. “This safe… The other cost three ours, but we made it… D’you think we were paid fair?”

He was answered by a strange guttural voice from the dark. “First I thought we were overpaid! But now I’m not sure.”

“But we got them!”

“Sleepy. What if they woke on time?”

The man stepped away from Thomas. “It’s done, anyway. But you’re right: we could demand more. Though they warned us… I’ve never seen such men before!”

Thomas stirred, checking the ropes. A sharp pain flared up in the back of his head, hammers went knocking in his temples. His hands were tied up with a thick rope tightly, neither could he move his feet. He heard a groan nearby, turned his head. A wish to die of shame filled him: the wonderer lay in three steps, naked to the waist, his blooded face pressed against the ground, his hands tied up on his back with several coils of a thick rope, as well as his feet. In the reddish firelight, his muscle seemed carved of dark wood.

A squat man emerged from darkness, his face oddly flat and yellow. He limped, his strong hands dangled on a level with knees. In his crooked fingers, which looked like roots of an old tree, he had clanging chains and iron bangles. With no word, only a crunch of joints, he sank beside Thomas, put the iron on his ankles and wrists, started riveting it. Thomas swore: that fool, blind in the dark, missed straight off and hammered his ankle. His leg was completely numb, swollen with the rope, but the dull ache in the bone echoed over his whole body.

The wonderer moaned, turned on his side. Thomas saw his face and closed his eyes tight at once, though he knew he’d see it branded on the inner side of his eyelids: the maimed, blooded face of his friend whom Thomas’s mistake betrayed into the hands of foes!

“Kite, send for master!” a husky voice said in the dark. “He pays rest, and we ride away. I don’t like it here.”

A hoarse laughter and malicious voice came from another side. “Stelmah has already run for him!.. He’s in a hurry. For good news, he’ll get two extra gold coins.”

“Damn him… We have no choice. Two of ours killed by that beast, though already tied up, one strangled by iron devil… A bit more — and they’d have killed all of us!”

I strangled him, Thomas grasped. But when? As far as he recalled, the dark came at once. In his fall, he must have reached the enemy, pressed him down, and squeezed. Strangely, he still had armor on, while the wonderer was stripped off it. He’s had the armor of Muromets on for barely an hour. He’s just not fated to wear armor!

In the silent night, the trample of hooves rang out, approaching. Someone came rushing at full tilt. His horse neighed in fright when its bit was seized suddenly from the dark.

A complaisant hand tossed some dry twigs into the fire. It crackled, lit the small glade up. Thomas heard steps, then a hoarse voice constrained with rage and burning passion. “They!.. At last!”

A knight in light armor stood over Thomas, his legs wide apart. He was clad in mail, leather pants, and light boots, only his helmet was a heavy, knightly one: it covered all of his face, with only a narrow slit for eyes and tiny holes drilled in the metal on a level with mouth.

Thomas shuddered. Cold came into his limbs, filled them with lead. He peered into the narrow slit in fear, trying to see the eyes.

The other knight bent forward, shook his head. His voice was hoarse, scary. “You know me, Sir Thomas?”

“Sir Gorvel?” Thomas whispered. His voice broke, a tight lump blocked his throat.

The knight took his helmet with both hands, lifted it slowly. Thomas gave a cry and bit his lip, as he saw that corpse face: maimed and yellow, ugly scars coming down over each another. Thomas could see red gums and a row of teeth through the narrow hole in Gorvel’s left cheek. A white dry bone protruded from his trimmed right cheek. As though on a skeleton after crows had their feast upon it. His right socket, empty and crimson like the pharynx of the Hell’s stove, did not outstand much anymore on his fully disfigured face.

With effort, Gorvel stretched his lips, as white as worms, in a malevolent smile. “You know… And I see, you grasped what awaits you this time… before I cut off your head and fling it into a pot of boiling water!”

“Why?” Thomas whispered in a choking voice.

Gorvel put his helmet on slowly, in jerks, as though his sinews were damaged. His voice was muffled, but still full of towering malice. “To separate meat. I’ll make a spittoon of your skull!”

“Once you were civilized…” Thomas whispered. “Sir Gorvel, don’t flatter yourself. It was no fear that make me shudder. It was pity!”

With no word, Gorvel kicked Thomas’s face with his boot. Thomas spat out a clot of blood, which hung by the soft top of foe’s boot. Gorvel kicked him again, targeting his smashed lips, but hit on the cheekbone. Blood went running down in an oblique trickle.

“To barn,” Gorvel commanded. His voice was as shaky as epileptic’s. “There’s a good one made of logs, beyond the orchard. I’ll be back in a couple of hours and kill them. But first I want to make sure the cup in his bag is that one!”

The flat-faced man who was called Kite objected with heat, “To barn? It’s beyond us to keep them there for two hours, even tied up. The two of them will smash every barn, should it be from the biggest stones, not to mention logs. It’s not what we agreed on! They need to be watched even if tied, even if chained! Watched each by