by Yury Nikitin
* * *
Thomas hung in his chains, feeble and half-conscious, when he heard the door bar click, then a soft whisper: “Sir Thomas! Don’t sock me on the head!”
A familiar figure slipped inside, setting the door ajar. Thomas jerked his head up, peered at the wonderer, unable to believe his eyes: Oleg had a sword on his belt and a knife in hand. He stopped in the middle of the torture chamber, giving his eyes time to adjust to the fading light of the only torch. “Oh… You seem to have been socked.”
He approached, seized the hooks on which the tormented knight was hanging. The muscle bulged in his shoulders. Oleg sniffed, pulled – and the iron pin creaked out of the wall. Thomas could not believe his eyes, but the wonderer, breathing heavily near his left ear, tugged another pin – and Thomas was free.
The small room smelled of burning, the air was stiff. A wall was covered with hooks, pincers, saws, iron rods used to pierce a leg through, special tongs for tooth wrenching and lip ripping. The corner housed a small forge and a pile of firewood. Wincing, Thomas rubbed his swollen wrists. “Was there a guard?”
“There is,” the wonderer said in a dull, almost sleepy voice. He did not seem to mind the thick iron ring chaffing his neck. The deeply curved writing on it, visible in the semi-dark, said the slave belonged to Baron Otset. Oleg looked around the chamber sadly. A bunch of keys that had once been on the jailer’s belt jingled in his hand. “Can you walk?” he asked softly.
“My bones are intact,” Thomas informed bitterly, with waking hope in his voice. “I’m burnt and beaten, that’s all. I only wish I could have hit back this time!” He snatched at his slave collar violently; that damned thing was burning him day and night.
The wonderer glanced back at him from the door. Thomas followed him out, screwing his eyes up at the bright light; there were two torches lit in the passage. The wonderer glided along as a shadow. As he moved he threw the bunch of keys under a heavy gate, with a wide stream of sewage running out from under it. There was a startled cry, a trample of bare feet.
“Runaway slaves there,” Thomas explained unnecessarily. “You knew it?”
“It’s the same everywhere. All the same…”
Thomas struggled to keep up but suddenly checked himself. “Wait! We won’t get out! At night the yard is guarded by a troll. I don’t know where he came from…”
“You could have warned me before,” the wonderer grumbled. “His watch has ended.”
Thomas sneaked after him, clutching at the wall. The answer puzzled him. He could barely keep up with Oleg; stiff legs were reluctant to obey.
“Let’s go to the stables,” the wonderer said. They stopped. “Your horse is there.”
“I can’t leave the cup!” Thomas replied, looking aside.
The wonderer shrugged indifferently. “Hurry then. Dawn’s 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 he stirred only once, cast a suspicious look around, and got drowsy again. His black hair was shoulder-long. He had thick leather armor under his iron plates, an axe across his lap; a gleaming shield leaned against the wall next to him.
Hiding in the shadows, they watched him. Thomas clenched and unclenched his fists. “If I got this bumpkin… But he’ll bellow like a bull before I reach him!”
With obvious displeasure on his face, the wonderer pulled his knife out, took it by the sharp point, as if to weigh it, then by its 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, then 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 the ear, two thin dark trickles running down. The wonderer pulled the knife out on the run, picked up the guard’s axe. He stopped at the door, wiped the bloody blade with a cloth. “Can we get out now?”
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 ten paces away, 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 his 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 bullish, so the guard thought better and went away to the opposite wall, to a small barred window. He jumped, grabbed the rods with both hands and pulled his face up to the stream of fresh air.
“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 his fall, put him 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 countered.
“Just stunned him.”
“That’s why his brain splashed on the 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 eagerly, 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 arrogance… Please help me with the clasps on my back! The knight’s trouble is that sometimes he can’t attire himself!”
In a moment, a half-naked stonemason with an angry face was concealed within the gleaming steel. The armor fit, 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, you are 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… That will distract the guards.”
They hurried up the steep stairs, climbed on an open landing. It was dark below, the night ripped by torchlight, the clang of steel, and shouts of men, but the sky was becoming 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 the 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 me
n shouted.
Thomas cursed; the guard was unreachable 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 breathed 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 fighting technique. 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! Because of you I can’t stop killing!”
“How will you get back here?” Thomas cried anxiously.
“I’m not going to!” Oleg shouted back angrily. “I’m going to the stables, to the 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 path, 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 his 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 wings flung open.
Thomas broke into the ornate room like 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 in thick billets. 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 cauldron.
The 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 there was something odd in his face, but he had no time to think it over; the Baron turned in his sleep, his nails scratched his strong chest, with its black bestial hair. The blanket slipped off, and the nightgown of 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 had 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 captivity, nearly leaked down entirely, into the folds and cracks of his soul.
He grabbed the Baron’s naked shoulder, squeezed it with gauntleted hand. “Get up! Hell is tired of waiting.”