“You will know,” Thomas told him slowly, keeping eyes on him, then looked at his tied feet. The three hirelings stared there too.
Paul went pale. Peter recoiled. Kite gritted his teeth, slapped Thomas on his face with all his might. “Now?.. You may scare these fools, but I’m a different sort!”
“Are you?” Thomas doubted. His smashed lips bled, but he got their eyes fixed on him. None of the three could see the desperate efforts of the wonderer. Oleg looked sullen and dulled, his face mostly hid in the shade, but something about him made Thomas hope.
The wonderer squirmed up and down, as though taking very deep breath. Thomas stiffened, bit his lip in fear and felt the salty taste of blood: a dark stripe came out from behind the wonderer’s back and went down slowly. It was a bit darker than the rocks and dry ground. Thomas could see it only because he was peering intently.
Thomas’s heart ached with fear and pity: the wonderer had cut his hands severely against the stone ledge, trying to fray the rope through. The pool of blood was growing, spreading around, as though he had cut large blood vessels!
For a moment, Thomas thought the wonderer decided to take his own life, not to let the despicable killers take it. But he was no noble man — a Pagan barbarian, and that sort would struggle for life till their last sigh, the last drop of blood and even longer.
“I know what I say,” Thomas told them significantly. He raised his voice, to prevent them from taking eyes off him. “Do you think I learnt nothing? On all the long way from my northern land over two seas to the torrid Jerusalem? When I took the Tower of David from infidels by storm? When I climbed the tall walls of Jerusalem?.. And the sudden attacks of Saracen riders on their horses, as fast as the simoom of deserts! And their assassins! You are no more than blind kittens against them!”
In a loud voice, he began to tell stories of the triumphant campaign of Christ’s host. The hirelings listened, their eyes fixed on him. Professional killers, they had thus never been outside their country, saw neither hotter nor colder lands, nor even the sea.
Suddenly Paul, the most suspicious one of the three, stirred anxiously. “It seems to me he chatters on some purpose!” His voice gave a quaver.
Peter laughed with light heart. “Of course he does! It helps him not to think of what awaits him.”
“No. There’s something maturing in his dome…”
“Soon the dome breaks and you see all of it,” Peter comforted. “Come on, iron bone! Come on!”
Thomas opened his mouth, but there came a trample of horse hooves in the dark. Kite took his bow and arrows, Peter and Paul — their sabers, the three of them stretched their necks to look over Thomas’s head. At last, Kite said with relief, “The master’s horse!.. Well, knight, the time’s coming.”
A rider became visible against the starry sky, his head and shoulders a strange gleam in the moonlight, as if he were covered with hoarfrost. His horse snorted, as it heard other horses, gave a soft neigh. Kite rushed to meet Gorvel with servility, helped him to dismount. Then one more rider emerged, on a small shaggy horse. Thomas grasped it was Stelmah.
Gorvel hobbled quickly up to the place where Thomas sat in his ties, shot a brief glance, through the narrow slit, at the motionless wonderer who seemed unconscious, his head dropped on the blooded chest, and turned again to the gleaming knight at once. “All in place?.. I rushed like a genie! Got afraid that some filth will interfere and spoil all of it. That’s no knight but a devil himself!”
“We coped with devils too,” Kite assured.
Gorvel limped up, stopped before Thomas. His only eye glittered in the moonlight through the slit, like a piece of ice. Thomas could see clearly a red socket in place of another eye.
Thomas replied with a straight look that showed his unsullied knightly pride, arrogance, and noble haughtiness. Gorvel spoke slowly, his breath still fast after a mad gallop. “What would you say now, Sir Thomas?”
“That I shall ride on and you stay here,” Thomas replied in a voice of a noble-born speaking to a stableman.
Gorvel recoiled, his hand gripped the sword. He glanced back at Kite and his companions with suspicion.
Kite advanced his palms, protesting. “It’s all right! Knights are all thick-headed. He can be brought to reason only by spear in his heart. Or his brain splashed around by battleaxe.”
“Then we’ll bring him to reason!” Gorvel said in a dull voice. “Or splash around?”
He drew out his sword: not knightly, as Thomas spotted, but a short and light one, as his maimed hand was no longer able to hold his previous heavy sword. Unwinking, Thomas looked at the steel mask that hung over him. The pity he felt for the half-man disappeared. The look of his blue eyes that seemed dark in the moonlight was straight and clear as always.
Gorvel’s voice thrashed in the iron box of his helmet, like a scary bat seeking a way out, darting from one side to another, scratching the iron with sharp claws. “You are the hero of the storm of the Tower of David, you released the Holy Sepulcher!.. You know prayers. You have to. Though I never heard you saying any but the name of Our Lady or swearing with clerical words. But now I want to hear a true prayer of you!”
“A true prayer will plunge you deeper into the Hell,” Thomas replied. “Don’t you fear a retribution from God?”
“We will all burn in Hell,” Gorvel snapped. “Not only me.”
Thomas saw in the dark that the rope on the wonderer’s body suddenly got weak. It had been stretched so tightly that it burst with a terrible crash, a crack like the one made by a shepherd’s whip. Everyone should have turned there, rush to him with sabers. Thomas’s heart got bleeding, but all the five of them, including Stelmah (he had come closer), were peering intently in the knight’s furious face. Thomas realized they heard no noises but the roar of close waterfall and the heavy breath of Gorvel.
“I’ll say more,” Gorvel’s voice roared in the steel tower of his helmet. “You will live just as long as your prayer lasts! But pray loudly, for us to hear every word.”
Behind them, the wonderer lifted his hands slowly. The fragments of ropes were still on them, dark blood dripped on the ground. His face was twisted with pain, his eyes two dark holes.
“Do it!” Gorvel demanded fiercely. He pressed the sword hilt a bit, the blade cut the skin on Thomas’s throat. Thomas felt a hot thin trickle running down. Strangely, it brought him relief.
“That’s a knight!” Kite said in vexation. “Proud. No prayer of him.”
“Why not? We’ll have it,” Gorvel assured. “But I suspect he, though swearing with the name of Holy Virgin at every step, knows no prayers at all.”
Paul made a wary move closer to them, his eyes fixed on the dark stripe of blood on the knight’s throat. “Getting to prayer now for him is the same as begging mercy,” he supposed. “These are Franks. They only pray to their god because he doesn’t exist really — no one ever saw him!”
Behind them, the wonderer stooped, his numb fingers undid the tight knots on his feet. Slowly, he got up, reeled on his stiffened legs.
Gorvel and Kite kept their eyes on the pallid knight’s throat. At last, Gorvel brought his sword away. His fingers took a stronger grip on the hilt, his voice from the iron cage sounded full of violent rage. “Then go to your stupid paradise, you miserable! And I’ll stay on earth. I swear I will steal Krizhina, the girl who you dreamed of even before the storm of the Tower of David. I shall be laughing at you, while I and she…”
“False comfort,” Thomas interrupted proudly. “She will never want even to wipe her feet on you.”
Gorvel raised the glittering blade of his sword overhead. He took a deep breath, engraving in his memory the sweet moment of the last blow that would break his foe’s head apart, like a rotten nut shell, splash his brain within dozens of steps around…
Chapter 28
