The Grail of Sir Thomas

smooth gleaming backs stick out, polished by the water. If he falls, he’ll crumble to pieces with fear before he gets down!

The wonderer’s breath was backbreaking, blood streamed down his back. Evidently, he was holding with his last strength, his fingers about to weaken, to come off the even rocky wall, and the two of them to start a long fall, as long as their lives!

Carefully, Thomas tried to slip off Oleg’s shoulder: he resolved to fall alone and let his brave friend survive. If the Virgin lets it too. He got afraid, but the more terror crept into his soul, the more diligence he put into his moves off the steep shoulder, seeking a way to slip down that would spare the wonderer.

Suddenly he felt the wonderer’s arm, up to the shoulder, passing under his chain. Now we’ll fall both! So Thomas, gnawing his teeth and cursing the selflessness of the northern barbarian of Scythia, tried to move his body closer to his neck to distribute the weight among both shoulders. “Angels damn you,” he hissed, like an angry snake, in Oleg’s ear, “and your nobility! We knights can die with no cry…”

The wonderer started to groan hoarsely through gritted teeth. Thomas closed his eyes tight, feeling with each his vein the creepy teeth of protruding rocks on the bottom of the gorge. He resolved not to open eyes. If we fall, we fall. He’d died of terror hundred times, what could be more?

A knock on his back, and he was pressed on the hard. The waterfall roared in his ears, that sound all but drowned the thundering breath of Oleg, the rattling and screaming in his chest. A dense water spray came all over them. Thomas opened his eyes hastily. In the moonlight, he saw the wonderer’s face distorted with pain, his lips bloodless, his nose sharp. They lingered on a tiny stone ledge, in just fifteen or twenty feet over the water. The waves lapped and thundered against the rocks, the air was filled with water mist. The wonderer staggered at the very brink, his eyes screwed up bus his arm stretched out over the edge, lest Thomas fall into the seething stream.

Suddenly Oleg’s eyes started to close. He sobbed, dropped to his knees, then fell on the side. Hastily, Thomas snatched the hem of the wolfskin with his fettered hands, kept Oleg on the stone ledge. The wonderer turned with a moan. With his eyes closed, he groped and slapped around. Thomas froze when the wonderer tore a dark wisp of grass out of a crack and put into his mouth. He hurried to seize Oleg’s hand, but the wonderer was already chewing with effort, then swallowing. Thomas saw Adam’s apple struggling up his throat.

Suddenly a furious shout rang out far above. Some noisy thing flew past them, hit the stones below. Thomas tossed his head but could only see the overhanging rocky cover.

The wonderer was crawling at his feet, grabbing something with both hands and filling his pocket, his jaws moving constantly, his eyes goggled as a mad man’s, his lips dripping with saliva. “Sir wonderer…” Thomas called. His voice gave a quaver.

Oleg shook his head, as he kept slapping on the rocky wall, searching the dark cracks. Finally, Thomas saw what the wonderer was snatching: the grass that grew in slits among stones. Hairy, loathsome, and disgusting like the back of a drowned rat.

Heavy rocks rushed down past them, the columns of splashes reached their ledge. Oleg got up, clinging at the wall, clasped Thomas silently around the middle of his body, squat to shoulder him.

Thomas screamed in terror. “Sir wonderer! If you have any strength left… save yourself! Off chance, as you put it, a miracle happens and you will survive. And I’m to be saved by no one.”

Oleg walked on the ledge, scratching the rock with Thomas, until the ledge got so narrow that the wonderer clung to the stone surface again and crawled down, clutching at the smallest unevenness. Thomas had died hundred times before, but when the splashes reached his legs he stiffened, tried instinctively to tuck his feet up, but made himself relax again, hang like a sack of sand, as the wonderer groaned of his squirms. Shamed, Thomas bit his lip until it bled: he felt the wonderer’s back sticky and soaked, but not with the waterfall splashes!

Suddenly Oleg slipped off a stone. Thomas’s blood ran cold. The roaring water stream poured them over, wisps of foam got stuck in the wonderer’s red hair.

For some long, agonizing moments Thomas waited for death to come, but the water rushed by. At last, he saw the wonderer was stuck between two boulders. He didn’t fell but jumped down at will. The water was knee-deep, but splashes and foam flew overhead. Thomas moaned, craving for a beautiful death again. He forgot he was not galloping into knightly attack on his warhorse and a beautiful death could hardly be achieved by the one tied up, hand and foot.

Holding the knight as a log on his shoulder, Oleg struggled on a smooth stone, measured the distance by eye, jumped. Thomas opened his eyes wide involuntarily, as he saw foaming streams among the rocks that protruded from water across the mountain river. The roar made his ears crack, the icy foam stuck up his eyes and mouth like glue… And the wonderer, with his fatal wound, leapt heavily from one wet rock to another, slipped on those wet giant eggs, but some miracle kept him from falling off, he leapt again, his rattling more terrible with every jump, his fingers getting weaker. Thomas saw a gap between rapids where the wonderer, utterly exhausted, would probably drop his unbearable load and fall down, his life burnt to ashes during those terrible hours!

Oleg collapsed heavily, face first, on the bank. Thomas rolled down from his back, glanced around in bewilderment. They’d left the scary water stream behind!

Thomas touched Oleg’s shoulder, the wonderer did not move. Thomas’s heart sank, he turned his friend’s head, removed the dirt and river rubbish from his face to prevent choking. The wonderer’s eyes were open but his stare stony dead.

“Forgive me, friend,” Thomas said heavily. He sobbed with burning shame of his being alive and chained, while the wonderer died to save him.

Suddenly Oleg’s eyelashes flickered, his face gave a twitch. The wonderer took a deep breath, fingers of his right hand clenched convulsively. Thomas jumped up, his chains rang. “Sir wonderer!” he cried. “Sir Oleg! Tell me: what to do? Never mind the cup. I’ll go to your Scytho-Rus’, just tell what to say of you! I’ll give the rest of our money to your family, don’t worry!”

“Pocket…” Oleg croaked.

“What?” Thomas didn’t get it.

“In… po… cket…”

Hastily, Thomas put his fingers into the wonderer’s pocket, then into another. It was difficult with fettered hands. The familiar disgusting grass stuck to his fingers.

“Give…”

Thomas obeyed, though with a shudder: put several nasty grass blades into the wonderer’s stiffening mouth. They were so small and entwined that seemed no grass but some frozen fibers of whitish slime. Oleg tried to chew but could not move his jaws, tried to swallow but his throat emitted dry heat that burned Thomas’s fingers. The knight hurried to scoop some water. It was spilled at once, but several drops got into the wonderer’s mouth. He licked his lips slowly, made a forced swallowing move.

“Sir wonderer? Do you have a family?.. Please tell me! I’ll tell them of your… of you!”

“And your Britain?” Oleg whispered softly.

“I’ll get there later. From your Russo-Scythia!”

“And Krizhina?”

Thomas felt as though stabbed in heart. With the eyes of his mind, he saw valiant Roland who died while covering the retreat of the force of his sovereign, Charles the Great. Roland loved beautiful Alda, she waited for him. As a true knight, he preferred friendship to love: dying, he said farewell not to Alda but to Durendal, his spatha-sword… “I’ll go to your Rus’,” he said firmly. “Or Ross. Wherever you like. You are a Pagan… Please tell me how to bury you.”

“Da… damn…”

“What?” Thomas cried. “Oh, daemonic rite! With sacrifice and dancing? And singing, yeah? What songs would you like?”

Oleg did not move. Suddenly he seemed dead to Thomas. Through the roar of close waterfall, he could not hear Oleg’s heavy breath, and the moon had found, by some miracle, a cloud in the night sky and hid behind it. Thomas, frightened but hopeless, shook his friend, clapped on his cheeks.

Suddenly the wonderer turned to him slowly his pale face, which had turned gaunt at once, his eyes sunken. “How are the arrows?”

Thomas clenched his jaws, examined the wonderer’s back quickly. The dagger wound was not bleeding