anymore but the blood did not dry either: Oleg was soaked with water splashes from head to feet, as well as Thomas. The second wound, on his side, was only bleeding a bit, as if all the blood had gone out before. Two tiny twigs stuck out under the shoulder blade. Thomas gave a dull groan as he grasped that he’d been touching them constantly while dangling, like a bag of stones, on the wonderer’s back. “If only we reach a healer!” he said with sudden hope. “Sir wonderer, we still have a chance…”

“Pull them out,” the wonderer said in a lifeless voice. He lay prone, his arms outstretched, as though he fell down from a great height. “The arrowheads are not deep in, I feel…”

“Sir wonderer!” Thomas cried in terror. “I can’t!”

“Then I’ll die,” the wonderer said plainly.

Thomas sobbed, gripped the broken fragment of arrow with his trembling fingers, but it, wet and soaked with blood, slipped out of his weakened hands at once. The muscle on the wonderer’s back, where the iron was stuck, gave a twitch. Thomas bit his lip, with an ardent desire to die straight off but the wonderer to become healthy instead.

“Pull slower,” Oleg croaked. “Do it very slow!.. Or the head slips off.”

Thomas joined his fettered hands, dug his nails into the wooden twig, started a long agonizing way above. Blood gushed out at once, ran down the back!

When the skin started to swell (which was a sign of the iron arrowhead approaching) Thomas stopped: the wooden twig was coming out too quick. It slipped out of iron! Holding the broken blooded twig to see the arrowhead bulging under skin, Thomas pressed his mouth to, tried to get the lump moving with his tooth, but the wonderer’s skin was too hard, tanned. Thomas closed his eyes desperately, not to see the blood, pressed the lump with teeth, holding it by the twig at the same time, started biting through that sturdy, unyielding skin.

Blood filled his mouth, he gulped it down. His head was giddy and dizzy, as if he were losing blood quickly himself. His teeth grinded against the iron, he pulled the twig with caution. A shapeless bloody lump came out of the wound: the iron arrowhead caked in clots of blood. He heard mountains collapse, horses neigh, and swords ring in his ears. Through all that noise, a distant voice came, “Now you are my brother by blood. Set to another…”

“You will bleed!”

“The water from glacier… Splash it over… To set…”

With the arrowhead clenched in his teeth, Thomas opened the second wound by cutting the live flesh, took the arrow out, then, at once, started to scoop the icy water and splash it on the blooded back. In the light of the breaking day, red streams ran back into the mountain river. They were growing lighter swiftly.

“E…nough!” the wonderer said with his teeth clanging. “My wounds shut… Of fear, it seems… and cold…”

Thomas could not bend his fingers, frozen like icicles. He could not feel his forearms, even his arms. The wonderer turned with great effort, sat up, resting hands against the ground. Yellow like a dead man, he became emaciated for that only night, the features of his face sharp. He looked again like the pilgrim whom Thomas had met beyond the walls of Jerusalem.

“We must go,” Oleg said in a constrained voice. “Thomas… you may jump like a bird or crawl like a snake, but we have to get away. There must be a bridge or a ferry somewhere. Soon they’ll cross.”

“I see no bridge,” Thomas muttered exhaustedly.

“This small river is no Dardanelles. And men even cross oceans!” He got up, leaning on the stones, then risked to take his hands off, stood for a while, staggering slightly. With fear and amazement, Thomas looked in his gloomy strained face. Oleg stopped swaying, turned his head. “Let’s go. They are coming. You can lean on me…”

Breaking himself, Thomas started to rise from the cold ground, thinking, with fear and perplexity, of the strange things in life. The forty wonderers turned out to be the heroes whose unheard-of might could shake kingdoms, and his wonderful companion and friend and also his sworn brother, as Thomas had tasted his blood… Who are they? What do they consider a true feat if they neglect their present deeds? They sing of knights who slew dragons, but these men killed the Hell’s monsters with all but bare hands — and forgot it at once, as if those were flies they drove away… And the wonderer does not see at all that each his step now is a feat!

He jumped after Oleg, his short chain rang, bangles made his ankles sore. The wonderer glanced back often, and Thomas saw with terror that his friend suffered more for him than for himself.

He felt a strange fury for the wonderer boil up in his soul. One good turn deserves another, and Thomas would never be able to pay back with a similar deed. Suffering for others is a thing of wild Paganism that fell under the victorious blows of Christ’s faith. True, Christ suffered for others Himself, but He was still a sinner at that time…

He felt a current of hot air, went jumping faster, fell down, rolled over, tried to proceed on his fours, but the bloody chain was too short: he would have to bend his back like a worm crawling along a stick… Thomas moaned through gritted teeth but did not slow down, as he saw the wonderer suffering more. He took my sin on his shoulders. Damned Pagan who behaves like the ascetic of Nazareth…

The wonderer stretched out his hand. “Lean,” he said in a dull voice. “Easier to jump.”

“What?” Thomas snapped with insult. “You lean!”

The wonderer still staggered but his feet did not miss anymore. His pace grew steady, and Thomas, to his shame and fear, fell the strength coming back to Oleg with every moment.

Chapter 29

When they got out of the piles of stones, there was a valley, green as the surface of an old bog. Trees stuck out of the carpeting grass in small close groups, very distinctive on the plain, as flat as a table. In places there also were curly bushes: thick, crowded, their branches very close, as though holding the line against the attacking hosts of grass and thistle.

Through pain and pounding in head, Thomas felt being supported, in times even dragged by strong hands. They hobbled up to the nearest shrubs and fell down into the shade: the sun was high. Thomas breathed frequently, his chest uttered rattling, screeching sounds, as though a knife scratching a pan.

“Be patient,” the wonderer told him in a husky voice. “When it darks, I’ll steal into a village. You hear dogs? It’s close. I’ll take a hammer, some pincers…”

Helplessly, Thomas felt his chains. Thick links were in blood — his blood. The iron bangles had chafed his legs up to flesh, almost up to bone, the sores oozed with blood and ichor constantly, the pain in times made all go dark before his eyes. “You won’t reach the village!”

“I will! Slavic children are taught to steel up to a wild goose, so that to pull a feather out of its bum. I’m no Christian, feel no shame in filching a hammer. Though I’d leave a coin instead… If I had any.”

“Are you strong enough?”

“Now I am,” the wonderer answered mysteriously.

“How did you gain strength?”

The wonderer did not reply: he was dead to the world. Helpless, Thomas sprawled on the grass in the shadow of a tree. Exhaustion fell upon him, like a warhorse in full armor. He lapsed into a doze.

His waking up was terrible: a rattle nearby, Thomas gripped the sword hilt, but his arm was flinched with pain, he heard a tinkle of chain… and there was no sword. He lay on his back, three tower-like men with coarse faces stood over him. They were clad in leathers, convenient for hunting, with bows over their shoulders, heavy knives on their belts. All the three had short spears in hands, the iron spearheads leaned on Thomas’s belly and under his ribs.

The wonderer lay bound tightly, the right side of his face covered with fresh blood. Thomas closed his eyes in helpless despair, groaned through gritted teeth. “Our Lady, what for?.. For the second time! So foolish…”

One of the hunters bared his crooked black teeth in a broad smirk. “Haven’t fought for long time, you villain?.. Get up!”

Nearby, the wonderer was jerked up by his tied hands and held up: he was sinking, his knees giving way, his

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