Godly travelers! Pilgrims! Open it, now.”
The guard leaned forward to have a better look at the godly travelers who yelled and swore like villains. “Oh, I see how godly!.. Wait ‘ill morning. Steward comes an’ sorts out.”
“Till morning?” Thomas cried in a scared voice. “It’s not even night now!”
“Soon it be,” the guard explained in a more friendly tone. “Night and day to while away. Have to while a day, and night… we won’t see it, thank God. Our place quiet, what they want here? Can’t stay at home. Roam, roam…” He scratched himself noisily, gave a wolfish, howling yawn.
Thomas gasped with fury. Oleg dismounted, with his face mournful. “Brother Thomas,” he said gently, “please hold my horse. That’s the world created by Rod: people would rather obey strength than truth. Take the horses back, and I’ll knock out the gate of this vile pigsty.”
The guard above burst with resonant laughter, his ill yellow face turned crimson. “Knock out?.. Ha ha!.. Saracen tried it with ram!.. An’ had hard time, like bears near fish…”
Oleg backed three steps, puffed up, held his breath. The guard neighed merrily, but Oleg rushed on the gate suddenly, hit against the tightly-knocked-together logs. Thomas shuddered with terrible crash, thunder, the screech of iron strips torn apart. Horses jumped, trying to break off the bridge into the moat, Thomas held them with iron hand. When he looked at the gate again, he could not believe his eyes. It seemed to be smashed with a rock from a giant catapult. Huge bars kept the folds from flying open, but the whole gate had been broken out: it lay in the yard in twenty feet from the breach. The walls of the stone arch had gaps from torn-out rods, the crumble of bricks rained down.
The wonderer lay, sprawled like a frog, on the gate: he looked like having slid there on ice that way. Thomas barely had time to turn horses when Oleg rose, beating the brick dust and small crumbles loudly off his clothes and swearing as only can swear a pilgrim who saw a lot of the world, passed Crimea and Rome, spent a night under the priest’s pear tree, not to mention Jerusalem where every Tom, Dick and Harry had been to.
Thomas rode through the breach proudly, leading the wonderer’s horse by reins. The survived guard was hanging above, shrieking shrilly. He was no more crimson but white, his feet scratched the air helplessly.
Other guards ran out of the building near the gate, stunned by the thunder. Their eyes popped out as they saw, in place of their indestructible gate, a gaping forest, far and dark, with some unwell blow coming from there. Massive hooks and hinges that had once been holding the heavy gate folds stuck out from the walls on both sides.
Thomas stopped the second horse near Oleg who was still beating small pebbles off his rags with disgust. Thomas pointed at the empty saddle, Oleg waved away sullenly. “Mounting, dismounting… What a monotonous life! ”
He walked across the yard to the main building. Some warriors ran down the porch, clanging with steel. Thomas kept snatching his hip: no sword there anymore.
They were surrounded, but Oleg, with no look at the warriors at all, went straight upstairs. Thomas vaulted off, threw the reins arrogantly into the face of the closest clot with axe in hands, and followed the wonderer. He heard a shriek behind: as the clot was grabbing the reins, he dropped the axe on his foot and went yelling, hopping along, gripping the injured foot with both hands, while horses, still trembling with fear, bustled about the yard.
The stone stairs were not pressed into the ground by their feet, as Thomas apprehended, not a single one even cracked. With relief, he realized that, despite all the monstrous strength, his weight was the same, as the bunches of overcome grass weighed less than a dead mouse.
Thomas and Oleg came into the entrance hall, which was all lit by the crimson light of a huge blazing fireplace near the far wall. Two armored men dried some cloths by the fire, their waders dried on the iron fender. There was a smell of fish pluck. Both men glanced over with surprise at the strange ragged newcomers who were followed, at a respectful distance, by three apprehensive soldiers with bare swords.
Oleg got tired of clanging sounds behind. He wheeled round suddenly, made a horrific grimace, and stamped his feet. The three soldiers were blown away at once, as though by hurricane. They collided at the door, a dropped sword rang, then a heavy body was heard to be rolling downstairs, crackling, crunching, and rattling. Thomas made a move to come back for the sword, which lay on the threshold and shimmered like a toadstool in the moonlight, but Oleg clutched his hand tightly. “Sir monk, do arms befit us?”
Thomas released himself with caution, his face grew white, his eyes suffering. “Sir wonderer, one should
Oleg replied in a grieving voice. “Grasses are to be found nowhere in our land in winter! Unlike these lands, where they have only summer. We hyperboreans have a habit to get full up at once.”
They passed the hall. A guard jumped away from the ornate inner door: something warned him not to stop the strange vagrants. Thomas kicked the door open before Oleg could do it. The folds flew open with a crack, the door bar, wrenched out roughly, flopped on the floor, some debris rained down from the ceiling.
The great hall was decorated with swords, axes, maces, and knightly shields over the carpets on the walls. In the middle, two tables were surrounded by benches made of halves of a split oak. Oleg nodded to Thomas, explaining silently that was a measure against brawlers who could, in full swing of a feast, lift a bench and brandish it, crushing others.
Both tables were formed by thick marble slabs rested on grey square blocks of stone. There were blazing fireplaces on two opposite walls, a good smell of fragrant smoke and burnt hair. The floor was made of huge slabs, the same as the walls of that gloomy castle, the cracks stuck with grey clay. However, the heavy blocks were fitted so tight that an ant could hardly pass between any of them.
Thomas sat down at the table and spoke haughtily, addressing no one in particular. “Hey, lord!.. Run for him, you bow-legged! I’ll have all of you flogged!”
Some heads, in horned helmets and without those, peeped into the door the friends had come through. Thomas’s menacing roar made the heads vanish. After a while, they came back, but not all of them.
Oleg walked along the walls, examined the arms. His heart pounded resonantly, about to get smashed up against the rib cage. Should he approach the door, the heads vanished and fast thumping was heard from the stairs, as though some scattered peas rolled down up to the cellar.
They heard a heavy ringing sound from the far door. A tall man emerged there: clad in iron armor all over, he looked so alike a metal stature that Oleg turned his head involuntarily to check whether Thomas was in place. Thomas, all ragged, his hands and feet bare, pulled an understanding smirk on.
The other knight was covered with gleaming steel from head to feet, but his raised visor allowed to see a narrow weather-beaten face, a red face burnt mercilessly by the southern sun. When he stepped in, some warriors appeared behind him, with a glitter of swords and heavy axes in their hands.
One of the warriors held a blazing torch, but the knight’s face was in the shade.
“Who are you?” the knight roared, his hand on the hilt of huge sword. He sounded like a lion and his voice, however closely Oleg listened to it, had no hint of confusion or fear, which are so often concealed by a might roar — only surprise and curiosity.
Oleg was silent, collecting his thoughts. Thomas cast a slantwise glance at him, replied in a deliberately meek voice, mimicking his friend. “We… humble pilgrims… Go from the Holy Sepulcher to Rus’. Live like song birds that walk roads and peck dung… An’ sing praises to Holy Virgin… Wear fetters…” He raised his hands to demonstrate the steel bangles that had rubbed his flesh away up to the bone. The chain fragments gave a tinkle.
The knight came, in a slow pace, up to the table where Thomas sat. His armor rang at every step, which made Thomas flinch with jealousy. The warriors came in after him but they dispersed along the walls. Each second man had a shiny broad-headed Saracen spear.
The knight stopped in two steps from Thomas, peered at him. “Humble pilgrims, eh? Since when has Thomas Malton of Gisland, which is on the bank of Don, become a humble vagrant? You used to go to sleep with no wench but your sword!”
Thomas gave a start but kept his seat, replied in a slow controlled voice. “As you see, Sir Burlan, I have no sword now.”
“Neither a wench,” the knight spoke in an unpleasant voice where a jeer could be heard. “Only a pilgrim friend instead… ahem. In this land, a fever is picked up by one and vile habits — by another… Have you lost your sword?”
Thomas blushed, blood rushed up to his cheeks at once, but with a visible effort he made his shoulders relax,
