That was the last thing Oleg could recall.
Chapter 31
In a strange dream, he saw himself lying on the river bank. Waves lap in two steps from his head, a fish jumps out to catch low-flying gnats. Watching that fat fish, he feels desperate hunger: not for gnats but for silly fat fish.
He struggled his heavy eyelids up. He
Oleg felt his body with a sluggish surprise: half-naked, ribs protruding like bones on a picked corpse, his belly all but stuck to his back. His swollen tongue was scratching against the palate, but once Oleg stirred, he felt a desperate hunger. No thirst, though his mouth was dry, but hunger. He would like a big fat fish.
He heard a moan nearby. Thomas lay there with his eyes closed. He was emaciated, his eyes sunken, his cheeks covered with two-week bristle. His gaunt body was naked to the waist, bones protruding on his broad chest, ribs about to break through the tightly stretched skin.
Oleg shook Thomas by shoulder. His own arm was moving dead, Oleg felt surprised at its being so thin. The knight heaved a sigh, his eyes opened. His look was perplexed, but then his pale lips curved in a feeble smile. “Sir wonderer… I thought we parted… As your place is in Hell, I’d have to sing alone with harp in hands… But the Virgin remembers of men’s friendship, so she placed us together…” He turned his head with effort, looked with surprise at the strange reddish clouds that hung straight over their heads.
Oleg sat up. He had a dull headache and saw double. The water was purling in two steps, a big stream rather than a river, but, strangely, Oleg could barely see the opposite bank. Was something wrong with his eyes? He had never seen such reddish dusk — or dawn? — before, though in his long life he’d been to many corners of the wide world created by immortal Rod.
He heard a perplexed voice. “Is it Hell or Heaven? If Heaven, then I should have a harp in hands, be seated on a cloud and sing praises to the Almighty… Or the Lord knows I have less ear for music than any bear in Britain and my voice makes crows drop as they fly? And I’ve never played harp… I played dice, thirty-one, twenty-one and vampire, I played joker but harp… er… But if that’s Hell, where are those creatures with tails whom I saw after every carouse that lasted more than a week?”
There was a quiet rumble overhead, then a loud splash in the river. Oleg felt creepy all over with an indistinct fear. His fingers found the necklace of charms, went counting them convulsively.
“But what if Purgatory?” the knight continued in a thoughtful voice. “A place neither for you nor for me?.. No way for you to our Heaven. Neither for me, a devout Christian, to your Pagan paradise, as your shameless orgies are forbidden to the warriors of Christ… unless one was drunken or couldn’t control his feelings, but then he should confess to the army chaplain. Our gods could arrange it: to put both of us, lest separate us, into the Purgatory. That’s a place between Heaven and Hell. Neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring, as we put it. Not a thing, neither one way nor the other…”
They heard steps. Oleg alerted. Thomas raised a bit, peering into the reddish semi-dark, gave a moan of weakness but kept his body rested on his arms, thin as splinters. Oleg observed the reddish dusk as closely as he could. Some vague spots, which could easily be taken for horned mugs or sharp-toothed jaws, floated before his strained eyes. Thomas slapped on the bare ground, groping for his sword, muttered a curse and bit his tongue with caution: he did not know whether one was allowed to swear in the purgatory or he would be transferred to hell for that. He had no fear of the boiling tar but a fear to part with his true friend.
A woman turned up from the semi-dark. There was nothing a moment before, she seemed to emerge out of thin air: slender and lither, with a paunchy jug in hands. Oleg smelled a befuddling fragrance but kept his eyes on the woman, not the jug. She was naked to the waist, with beautiful high bosoms, in a long skirt. However, both friends were naked to the waist too.
“We are in the Mahometan paradise!” Thomas whispered anxiously, but his eyes were glued on the beautiful woman. “I have Saracen boots on, they could confuse…”
The young girl put the jug down between Thomas and Oleg, took two silver cups off her belt. Her moves were graceful, she kept smiling. Thomas blushed but couldn’t take his eyes off her maidenly snow-white bosoms, with pointed teats that seemed to be made of pink granite.
“Is it paradise?” Thomas asked in Saracen. “Are you a houri? And where are the rest twenty thousand?”
She bared her pointed white teeth in a smile, answered in a strange language, which Oleg hadn’t heard for ages but, strangely, he could still understand it easily. He gave a start of amazement, felt his back shivery. “Where are we?” he said slowly, choosing the words of the Agathyrsian language with effort.
The girl’s eyebrows flew up high, her eyes opened as wide as they could. She backed, said hastily, “The elder come and explain. And now you drink mountain mead.” Oleg felt creepy with fear again, as he watched her vanish at once.
Thomas followed her with shiny eyes. “What a jump!.. She did not expect anyone to know her language.”
Oleg tilted the jug carefully over the silver cup. From the narrow mouth, a strange dark liquid streamed out, with no splash. The smell was pungent. “She was right,” he replied.
“But you…”
Oleg brought the cup to his lips, made a cautious sip, listened to himself, drained the rest of the strange mead with more confidence. It made his stomach heavier, his body liven up, his heart beat with more force.
Thomas drank his part. “Mountain mead?” he said with perplexity. “It feels like liquid meat… Sir wonderer, I think we are in your Pagan hell!”
“Slavs have no hell,” Oleg reminded. “Hell was invented by Christians.”
“Or your Pagan heaven. No difference. Our Heaven is for fleshless souls, and here I feel a stitch, a thirst, and other things… I’m sure we can fight here too and our wounds will heal at midday.”
“That belongs to Valhalla,” Oleg explained patiently. “The paradise of Scandinavians. Rus’ lies to the south of them and to the north of Eastern Roman Empire…” He lay down, satiety spread over his body, his eyelids became heavy, he couldn’t help closing his eyes.
“Is Rus’ between Aleman and Pole?”
“Closer to Steppes… Sir knight, abandon your vain hopes. We are in no hell, no paradise, not even purgatory. We shall hear the godly music some other time.”
Thomas touched himself with amazement. “That’s why I feel so alive!” he said with surprise. “But you promised we’ll die!”
“Promises are like piecrust… I can’t fathom myself what could hamper. Off chance it will come right…”
“That mysterious ‘off chance’ again!”
For the second time Oleg woke up with hunger again. He saw a new jug, bigger and broad-mouthed one, on a flat stone. Thomas was asleep, his arms outstretched, the reddish dusk curled behind him. Clouds hung overhead. Oleg felt something wrong: for the time it took him to have sleep out and get hungry, no cloud had moved or changed its shape.
Some voices and laughter came from the left, a crackle of coals, a smell of birch firewood. He heard horses neigh nearby and a strange many-voiced echo repeat after them but, as close as Oleg peered, he could see no people, no fire, no horses. Feeling weak and ill, he struggled up, walked on the voices. He staggered, the world before his eyes went dark in times, in other times he saw a flash of reddish stars.
The fire was revealed suddenly, as though a tent curtain was opened before Oleg. Some men and women are sitting by the fire. Everyone is small, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, their faces as white as mealworms. They have elaborate clothes on, as though for a celebration, but sit on stones, lie on the bare ground. Some thin slices of meat, separated from each other with fragrant leaves, hang on willow twigs over the coals. As fat drips down on the coals, bluish smoke flies up.
“Good day,” Oleg said in the language of Agathyrsians. He stopped in three steps from the fire. “Or evening?”
