The Grail of Sir Thomas

“I can’t leave the cup!” Thomas replied, looking aside.

The wonderer shrugged indifferently. “Hurry then. Dawn is at hand.”

“And you?”

“I’ll move on my way with a prayer. Fights and bloodshed are none of my business.”

The corridor curved. In twenty steps there was a massive door to the courtyard. Beside it, a bulky soldier sat on a keg, his back rested on the wall. His helmet, iron plates on his shoulders and knees, and the broad blade of his axe were gleaming red in the torchlight. Sometimes his red lips opened sleepily, but the guard stirred at once, cast a suspicious look around, and got drowsy again. His black hair was shoulder-long. He had a thick leather armor under his iron plates, an axe across his laps, a gleaming shield leaned against the wall next to him.

Hiding in the shadow, they watched him. Thomas clenched and unclenched his fists. “If I got this bumpkin… But he’ll bellow as a bull before I reach him!”

With obvious displeasure on his face, the wonderer pulled his knife out, took it by sharp point, as if to weigh it, then by handle. Thomas watched in confusion. The wonderer swung, his hand made a sudden brief and swift move. A faint lightning flashed in the smoky air along the corridor, died out at once. The sleeping guard stopped quivering, his head dropped, his chin set against his chest.

Thomas snatched the sword from the wonderer’s hand, rushed forward. The knife was stuck in the guard’s head beside ear, two thin dark trickles running down. The wonderer pulled the knife out on the run, picked the guard’s axe. He stopped at the door, wiped the bloody blade with a cloth. “We get out?”

Thomas hardly took his astonished eyes from the pilgrim’s pale face. “What? Ah! The armory must be on the right, sir wonderer.”

“Been there?”

“No. But if I were building…”

The armory door was in ten steps, guarded by two men. Thomas noticed that the wonderer clenched his fists powerlessly and whispered something of no more killing, please, for we are all strangers in the night, or some nonsense like that.

The guard seated on a wooden block was dozing, his legs jerked. Another one was walking to and fro, yawning, rubbing his eyes with fists.

The sitting guard gave a loud snore, his legs stretched across the passage. Irritated, his partner intended to kick him, but the sleeping man looked like a bull, so the guard thought better and went away to the opposite wall, with a small guarded window in it. He jumped, grabbed the rods with both hands and pulled his face up to the fresh air jet.

“Day is breaking,” the guard said, then jumped down and turned. He saw a flash, a violent blow shook his body. Oleg caught him in the fall, put on the floor gently. He felt a draught, as Thomas galloped by like a horse. There came a thump, as if a log were axed.

Oleg flung the armory door open, glanced back at Thomas with reproach. The knight’s eyes glittered with joy. “Why kill him?” Oleg spoke sadly. “He’s no enemy.”

“And what you did?” Thomas wondered.

“Just stunned.”

“That’s why his brain splashed on walls!”

The armory was a big room with low ceiling, full of trunks, chests, sabers, daggers and other weapons. Along the walls, there were shields, pieces of armor, and flexible lines of riveted steel, all lying in heaps. Small mail rings shimmered like fish, dusty helmets stood in a row like overturned pots.

Thomas rushed into the far corner, rummaged there avidly, scattering the pieces. “That’s my armor!” he whispered.

His hands were trembling, his blue eyes in tears. He hurried to pull the heavy steel on, his fingers slid off. “Sir wonderer,” he begged in a whisper. “Don’t take it as impudence… Please help me with clasps on my back! The knight’s trouble is that sometimes he can’t array himself in!”

In a moment, a half-naked stonemason with an angry face was concealed within the gleaming steel. The armor was fitting but the slave collar did not want to go inside, Thomas pushed it in with a fist. His blue eyes looked at Oleg through a narrow slit, the rest of his body covered with iron.

Thomas stooped easily — pieces of his armor slid apart in particular places to allow it — seized his triangle shield, snatched the cross-handled sword from the wall. “Forgive me, sir wonderer. Though you are no highborn but not a servant either. I shouldn’t have asked you to clasp me as if you were a squire…”

“Stop it,” the wonderer winced. “You’d better hurry. Do you hear it?”

There was a noise in the yard: clamor, furious barking of dogs, then a desperate squeal. “Slaves picked the keys,” Oleg said. “It took them so much time… Now they’ll smash and plunder all around, break into the wine cellar… and distract the guards.”

They hurried up the steep stairs, climbed on an open landing. It was dark below, the night ripped by torchlight, clang of steel, and shouts of men, but the sky was going lighter, stars fading. They felt a cool morning breeze.

They saw a watchtower on the left and the wall stretching along from it. In three or four steps, there was a lower wall fencing a corner off the yard. A guard in light armor was walking on the top of that wall, his cold hands under his arms, a sword and a knife on his belt. He cast uncaring glances below, where the torchlights rushed and men shouted.

Thomas cursed: the guard was unattainable on that side-by-side wall. The soldier raised his head and saw an armored knight and a half-naked man, lean but broad-shouldered, both with swords. His eyes popped out, his chest started rising, as he took in the air for a loud cry.

Thomas felt some hot thing rush past him. The next moment, he saw the wonderer pouncing upon the guard: he jumped legs first, and they crossed around the soldier’s neck with such strength that Thomas heard the crunch of broken bones. Both slid down the wall: the guard with his eyes popped and the half-naked man on his shoulders. At the last moment, the wonderer clutched at the wall edge. His legs came apart, the limp dead body slipped down.

Thomas could hardly believe his eyes: he had never seen such a fight practice. He heard a faint slap below, as if a sack of wet linen were thrown down on cobbles. The wonderer pulled himself up the wall, shook his fist at Thomas. “Damn you, knight! I don’t stop killing!”

“How’d you get back here?” Thomas cried anxiously.

“I’m not going to!” Oleg shouted back angrily. “I’m going to stables, to horses. And you want Baron? His chambers are just beneath you!” He rushed along the wall to the stairs that led down into the yard.

Thomas came to his senses, chose the shortest cut, although dodging and twisting, built in a way to help defend the castle. He ran by the inclined edge. Men in the yard below cried louder with joy, torchlights rushed faster. He heard a crack of wood, a clang of steel.

A guard, as lanky as a milestone, stood half-asleep beside an ornate door. He raised a gleaming spear. Thomas crushed him with a brisk strike of gauntleted fist, thrust the door with his shoulder. The wood cracked, the massive bar flew off its hinges with an ear-grating screech of iron, the folds flung open.

Thomas broke into the ornate room as an avalanche. It was a bedroom, as large as a hall, low-vaulted, lit by a huge fireplace that could burn a whole tree. A crooked old man was sitting beside the fire, throwing thick billets in it. In the middle of the room, there was a high bed covered with a bright canopy and curtained by silk.

Running across the bedroom, Thomas tore the bed curtains away, then stopped and turned, his sword and shield ready for battle. On the two puffy pillows of the luxurious bed, he saw two heads: one female, her golden hair lit the room when Thomas ripped the curtain away, and one male, black as a firebrand and big as a caldron.

Baron was asleep, his mighty arms stretched behind his head. He had a tiny forehead, overhanging brows, a short flattened nose with huge nostrils, and a heavy back-slanted jaw. Thomas felt something odd in his face but he had no time to think it over: Baron turned in his sleep, his nails scratched his strong chest with black bestial hair. The blanket slipped off, and the nightgown on the golden-haired woman opened wide. Thomas started back, blurred by the tender whiteness of her skin. He had time to see her alabaster breast, perfect in shape, crowned with a bright-red rose bud.

She woke up, her blue innocent eyes opened wide in astonishment, as well as her small coral mouth. Amazed, she looked into the eyes of the same blue that watched her through a narrow visor slit.

Thomas struggled to take his eyes off her. His fury, which had been boiling up for all the days of his shameful