head dropped on the breast. Thomas looked in the faces desperately: all strangers. “What do you want?”
The older hunter looked surprised. “We? Nothing. Take you to master, for him to decide. It’s clear you are runaway slaves… Or some outlaws broken out of prison?”
“We are not outlaws,” Thomas moaned.
“Why chained then, you? Defiler, yeah? I see it by your mug.”
Thomas gnashed his teeth, nodded at the wonderer. “And he? Let him go… He is not chained.”
“Why’d he hobnob with you?” the hunter asked sober-mindedly. “Either helped you or a sort of that… If not guilty, we let him go. Our master’s a beast, but a fair beast. He will let you go too if finds out you chained for nothing. But don’t be too hopeful: such chains are never put on for nothing!”
They were thrown across the saddles and bound tightly. The only man who escorted them drove horses fast. The rest had galloped away, shrieking, as they saw a deer. Thomas started to twitch fervently, trying to weaken the ropes at least, but the beautiful house of white stone was growing ahead too quickly: a light mansion, its roof supported by pillars of show-white marble, open to the light of southern sun.
A young boy ran out to meet them, flung open the gate that was easy to jump over for a pregnant hare. The master of the castle seemed to be carefree: either a fool or the very name of him kept villains away.
The well-groomed grass crept under hooves. The palace towered ahead, but the horses were led past stables to a gloomy bran formed by massive granite slabs. The gate squeaked open, captives were hurled into. The gate bars thundered outside: one, two, three, and a padlock was hung on with a thud. A stern voice commanded invisible guards to keep their eyes skinned: if they leave their guard even for a moment, both would be fed to dogs, just like the runaway wench who tried to escape the master’s bed the week before.
Thomas waited until his eyes got a bit used to the dark, then called quietly. “Sir wonderer… are you alive?”
He heard a feeble moan. “My head smashed…”
“It is the end of us,” Thomas said with a creepy feeling of doom. “It is! Not because we got captured but because it’s the second time I blundered on my watch. The second time they took us sleepy! Two times in a row! I beheaded sentinels who guarded our hosts from Saracen for such things.”
He heard a faint voice in the dispersing dark. “What watch, Sir Thomas?.. Don’t be foolish. We were both half-dead.”
Oleg tossed in his corner, groaned, squirmed, gnashed his teeth. A strip of bright light penetrated under the door. Thomas’s eyes accommodated, he could see protruding stones in the walls, dirty hay on the floor.
“Dark…” a hoarse voice came from the corner. “Or it’s my eyes?.. Sir Thomas, is it night?”
Thomas felt his back snowed. He moved his shoulder blades, as though a wet icicle slipped by the scruff of his neck. “Take heart, sir wonderer.”
“I see,” Oleg croaked, “I see now it’s dark… in me…”
Squirming, bending in torment, he scratched some whitish thing out of his pocket, with fingertips of his tied hands, bent his palms with effort in the opposite direction, brought to his mouth. Thomas felt a sharp smell, watched closely and gave a start: his friend’s lips were in yellow big-bubbled foam. “A rare moss…” the wonderer croaked. “Extinct all but everywhere, survived here. We in our woods call it overcome grass. I’ll die soon, Sir Thomas, but first I make you free.”
“How?!” Thomas exclaimed in disbelief.
“The overcome grass gives strength… Then one dies, like a fly in the frost.”
“Poison?”
“Each man has some strength in store… like a hamster in his burrow… Overcome grass is to release all of it at once. That’s why he dies — he has no strength to live anymore…”
He brought to his mouth the whitish fibers, the biggest of which looked like blind worms that live in deep caves where God’s light can’t reach. Thomas caught his hand, tore the disgusting fibers off his palm and threw into own mouth. Twisted with disgust, he started to chew, his palate and tongue got burnt at once, his mouth hot, as though he swallowed a red-hot horseshoe. His stomach twitched, started to climb hastily up his throat.
Thomas overcame sickness and swallowed. A ball of fire sank down his larynx, kicked down the stomach that was climbing from below, and both came down as a burning avalanche. He felt something in his belly ooh, toss, and jump. “We’ll die together!” he claimed firmly.
“Don’t be stupid…” the wonderer whispered with his heavy, swollen eyelids lowered. “What about Holy Grail?.. Krizhina?”
Thomas closed his eyes tight. He hated himself for all the trouble he had brought on his friend. “Isn’t it a disgrace to leave you to death?.. And more disgrace to save myself at your expense.”
“But Krizhina?”
“I don’t want her to be a wife of disgraceful man.”
“And Holy Grail?”
“He was searched by the Knights of the Round Table, as far back… They found it and lost again! Now I see it were the Secret Seven who hampered them too… But I believe that, though I now lose it, my good young Britain will have another brave knights who, eventually, shall bring the Holy Grail to its shores.”
The wonderer turned side to him silently. Thomas divided the rest of the moss, as disgusting as nothing on earth, in two equal parts. “Chew it. We shall die as men.”
Imperceptibly, his legs, sore with fetters, stopped aching. His bleeding wrists got covered with dry rustling scab. Thomas shifted his stunned eyes to the wonderer: he grasped that when Oleg had chewed that slick muck for the first time, over the waterfall, all the strength he gained was used to heal the terrible wounds faster. And now — Thomas blazed with shame and disgrace — he burnt down the rest, trying to help Thomas, his random companion. The faithful friend, a peaceful seeker of Truth would die first of him, a man of war? A brass head, as old men put it, though his forehead was covered by no brass but shining steel…
Thomas gnashed his teeth, depressed by the feeling of guilt. “When does that moss take effect?” he asked angrily.
“It’s ancient overcome grass…”
Through the wall of the barn, they heard heavy steps. The bars thundered, the door flew open with a heartrending screech. In the bright sunlight, a squat man in red shirt, with a crimson brand on his forehead and heavy eyebrows, appeared on the threshold. With his gimlet-like eyes, he inspected the tied-up captives quickly, lingered his look on the wonderer, whose face was covered with stabs of dry blood. “Who fed them?” he asked in a creepy voice that seemed to be coming from his belly.
Behind him, some men in leather jackets get moving anxiously. They sounded like frightened birds. “No one!.. We swear it!.. Never, none of us would!..”
“Why they slobber?”
“Gnawed at the walls with hunger! Moldy, mossy as they are…”
The branded man stepped in, stopped before Thomas, kicked him in face. Thomas’s head jerked with his blow. The branded man’s smile got broader, he kicked the captive again with his shoed boot, a brass flourish glitter dimly on the toe. “Get up, you carrion!” he roared terribly. “Live carrion, but how close to dead!.. Now you’ll be sorted out.” The hunters came after him, set their short spears, the heads of which looked more like knives, at Thomas and Oleg from three sides. The wonderer got up, walked out first, after he cast a warning glance at Thomas.
The green yard was flooded with bright sunlight but the air cool and fresh. A young ripe girl was carrying a wooden barrel across the yard, her body a beautiful curve. Water splashed over the brim, clear drops glittered like pearls. She cast a slantwise glance at the bashed, tied-up captives, one of them ringing with fetters, and smiled vacantly, showing her even white teeth.
Behind the barn gate, two more guards advanced their spears and that way, in a tight ring, captives were led across the yard into the palace that looked like a dream made of white lace. On the stairs, broad and sparkling in the sunlight, they were met by two armored warriors. One tripped the wonderer up silently and, as he stumbled, roared and whacked him on his back with the thick end of spear. Thomas, beside himself with fury — the wonderer had two wounds of arrows and one of dagger on his back! — jumped on the guard, gripped him by breast with tied hands, his strong fingers pinched his skin together with mail, lifted up into the air and hurled forcefully down to his feet.
He did not feel the blow, only a thunder in head, a flash of lighting, and he fell down, face first, but even as
