by Yury Nikitin
* * *
At the fork in the road, Oleg reined up in hesitation. The mountain and the valley where the last Hazars – barbarized offspring of the proud founders of Khazar Kaganat – had terminated their existence was behind them. Chachar and Thomas, still pallid, rode mighty Frankish horses. Behind each of them, two remounts carried their load.
Thomas suffered from the pounding in his ears. He did not care where they went. All he wanted was to get as soon as possible to his native Britain where beautiful Lady Krizhina counted in fear the days that remained before Saint Boromir’s Day. The next morning after it, her brothers, hating Thomas, would force her to the altar with abominable Meloun who had no virtues, but a long pedigree and a pair of short legs!
Oleg hesitated. The broad road straight ahead is broken, in some several hundreds of miles, by a narrow strait that separates two worlds: Asia and Europe. On the opposite shore, there lies Constantinople: the city of cities, the second Rome. And if they ride straight for some more hundreds or thousands of miles, the road will lead them to the next channel, with gloomy rocks on the other shore: the cold shore of Britain. “We’ll spend the night here,” he resolved suddenly. “Something wrong about the city ahead.”
“Sir wonderer,” Thomas said in a faint voice, “it seems to me we’ll have to winter among Saracen!”
“Sir Thomas, you don’t cling to your life, but what about the cup?”
Thomas touched the bag involuntarily. Now he would not allow the cup away from himself even for a moment. He carried it on his mount, mistrusting other horses.
“Sir Thomas, you’d better lie down,” Chachar said hastily.
“If that’s an invitation…” Thomas began hesitantly.
“You look unwell,” she hurried to explain.
They dismounted aside from the road, in a bunch of trees. Oleg unsaddled the horses, while Thomas and Chachar went for brushwood. Chachar boasted she knew herbs from her grandmother, a famous witch, and promised to gather them. Thomas gave Oleg an awkward look, warning him not to expect any wood to be brought.
Oleg gathered some dry twigs himself, made a fire and peered at the dancing flames. He saw distinctly the riders galloping, birds flying, flapping wings of dragons and ferocious faces of warriors, hands raised in begging, the glitter of sabers… In fire, everything changes swiftly, vanishes and comes back in a different shape, showing only a bit of its nature, a hint. But sorcerers are taught to know the trouble by a flash, as a hunter knows the bird by its feather and the animal by its single hair!
He felt his hair raise with fear. A mortal danger waited for them just at the city gate! Something vague but related to blood, axes, horse hooves. If they went left, then across the river, on the other side of the ferry, there was an ambush of Saracen assassins. They’d shoot point-blank from strong crossbows – who gave British crossbows to them? – and finish the travelers off with curved Damask sabers. The road on the right was barred by something indistinct but abominably dangerous. They’d definitely fall into its dreadful spider clutches if they went there…
His hair stirred with terror and revulsion. He raised his hands with effort, clutched at his charms, like a drowning man clutches at the tree roots hanging down. His fingertips darted on the tiny wooden figures, searching for consolation, salvation, any loophole among the surrounding traps, snares, and pitfalls.
Thomas came back, against expectation, with a huge armful of big thick poles. When Oleg asked about Chachar, he shrugged and pointed vaguely at the north. Oleg boiled a herbal potion. He would collect herbs at any occasion, even stoop from the saddle on the go to pluck flowers. In case of need, he stopped, dismounted, dug the whole plant out, trying not to damage its roots. He filtered the potion to remove scum, let it settle. Thomas lay near the fire with a faint smile: the very smell of the potion was enough to stop his headache, to add some strength.
The shadows cast by the nearest trees were growing longer, till they merged into a thick black veil. The crimson sunlight moved up the trunks, threatening to fly up over their tops soon and vanish. The light blue sky was turning navy blue. In its right half, a pale crescent showed itself, the first stars flashed. “Where the hell is she?” Oleg said in vexation.
“Searching for herbs,” Thomas replied awkwardly. “Doing her best, sir wonderer. I’m not glad myself that I’ve taken her as a burden, but… it happened this way.” Moaning at times, he climbed out of his armor, put the iron pieces near the fire to fry the maggots of pernicious flies.
“Where did she find herbs here?” Oleg grumbled with a contempt he could not conceal.
“Behind the grove. She wanted to please you. You look so formidable, severe. She’s afraid of you.”
“Behind the grove?” Oleg repeated anxiously. “Too far. Not enough time for her to come back by night.”
“She took a horse,” Thomas said in a guilty voice. “She’s doing her best! It’s sinful to blame such a sheep. Her sort is forgiven by God.”
“She’s a featherbrain, Sir Thomas. But how could you let her go?”
Thomas looked aside awkwardly, his cheeks flushed. “Sir wonderer. I was in a difficult situation. I told her about my fidelity to fair Krizhina, and she told me we wouldn’t be seen! I said that the Holy Virgin condemns even sinful thoughts, and she said you were already sleeping. Or busy cooking a hare with those spices that set our blood on fire…”
Oleg sat grim and silent. Thomas’s voice sounded muffled, as if his ears were full of wool. The fire blazed, flames changed swiftly: bloody-dark shadows gathered there, highlighted by orange, almost white flashes. Ghostly riders galloped swiftly, arrows flew, towers collapsed, cities burnt…
“Should we search for her?” Thomas offered feebly but did not stir.
Oleg glanced at the dark sky swarming with stars and shook his head. “Too dark to see tracks. If she’s not back by dawn, we’ll ride to find her then. Summer nights are short here. You can barely have a sleep before the day breaks.”
Chilled, Thomas woke up from the cold. The fire had burnt down. Against the lightening sky, he saw the figure of a giant carrying saddles, sword baldrics, and Thomas’s lance away. Horses were snorting, rich grass crunched in their teeth. Not until the dark figure came to the horses and started to saddle, did Thomas shake his sleepy torpidity off and jump up, shivering and flinching. “She didn’t come?”
“I’ve missed her,” Oleg replied sullenly. “Let’s go and find her.”
“Forgive me, sir wonderer. It’s all my fault… My double fault. We’d better have left her in that house.”
They mounted. Thomas checked himself and thanked the wonderer with a casual nod, as he was not obliged to saddle the knight’s horse. A common man, but a free yeoman, not a landed villein. If he shows me respect, I must treat him the same, as ordered by Our Lady. “To the grove?” Thomas asked.
“Go there. And I’ll ride to the left. There’s a slope down to a stream sided by rich grass. Lots of different roots. Both medicinal and poisonous.”
Thomas dashed to the grove while Oleg drove his horse in an easy trot, watching the grass closely. The prints of deer and boar hooves were frequent, and the green grass blades were trampled down where smaller animals had been lying.
As Oleg rode across a narrow valley overgrown with sparse shrubs, he heard a movement behind far away branches. Instantly, he rolled off the saddle and on to the ground, to escape an arrow shot or a knife thrown at him, stopped behind a thick bush and became all ears.
The valley was silent, except for carefree grasshoppers chirruping. Butterflies fluttered everywhere, undisturbed, even over that suspicious bush. Oleg’s stallion remained in place, nibbling with a crunch at the fresh green leaves. His ears twitched angrily, as he drove away a big dragonfly that kept trying to seat itself on their upright hairy ends. In a soft whisper, Oleg ordered the horse to stand still – the master knows better – and started to move in short quiet rushes, stooping behind shrubs, his throwing knife ready in hand.
> On the other side of the bushes, a saddled horse grazed peacefully on a green lawn. Oleg returned noiselessly to his own horse, mounted and rode around the shrubs, looking for the rider, either dead or alive.
At the sight of Oleg, the empty horse gave an anxious snort, alerted, but did not run away. On the contrary, it went toward him at a careful pace, greeted his stallion with a quiet neigh. Oleg recognized the horse of Chachar, stroked the leather of its saddle. His fingers got sticky with blood.
Feeling creepy all over, Oleg seized its reins, spurred his stallion. Both horses dashed on at full tilt. Oleg kept his eyes on the hoof prints, barely visible on the hard ground.
Judging by tracks, Chachar’s horse had been strolling without the rider, stopping to nibble at the grass, then turned to drink from a stream, ate the tops of shrubs in two places. Thick grass was crumpled where the horse had been lying, kicking up and down playfully.
The sky was darkening too fast. Oleg looked up and groaned helplessly: a large dark cloud was coming upon them, with bitter brief flashes of lightning in its black depth. The wind blew at his back. That damned rain will wash the tracks off, faint as they are!
At a tilt, he stood up in his stirrups, looked around. The wind bent down the blades of sparse grass, the clouds climbed upon each other in many layers. Suddenly a white glare came from inside one cloud, a menacing rumble moments after. Nowhere in the steppes, as far as he could see, no one was lying, sitting, or waving at him.
He had to bend lower, peering at the blurry tracks till his eyes ached. In the dark that fell, he would have not noticed an arrow shot at him, a lasso thrown, or even someone jumping onto his horse. The tracks were often lost… Suddenly his blood ran cold: he saw traces of two unshod horses on the left. Judging by the hoof prints, the horses were light and slim-legged, as most horses in this land, and their riders had no heavy armor on. Perhaps they had leather jackets on: those would do to block a strike of light saber or the shot of homemade bow.
As the traces told him, the riders had taken a brief counsel and ridden apart, searching for the tracks of others. Once they got certain of a lone rider on their way, they rode on his tracks for about a hundred steps before they realized it was an empty horse. They could have spotted it before. That was when they retraced and urged their horses at a slow pace on the tracks of a pedestrian, often stopping to peer at the trampled grass and faint footprints.
Oleg whipped his horse. It was much easier to follow the tracks of two horses, so he galloped, jumped over shrubs. He saw the hoof prints were quite fresh. In some places, trampled grass was straightening before his very eyes, in others the milky white juice was still oozing from grass blades broken by sharp hooves.
In the falling dark, a fearful branchy lightning flashed, dazzling him. If the glare did not illumine the thickening twilight, Oleg would have bumped at full tilt into a couple of Arabian argamaks who stood in a narrow green valley. Somewhat farther in the valley, two shaggy ragged men, knives on their belts, were coming to Chachar with loud laughter. She backed away, but one man rounded her in a wide arc. Chachar stopped, jerked her head up proudly. She was pale, her hair disheveled. Her eyes flashed with the same lightning as the sky.
Oleg reined up, snatched his bow. The robbers spotted the stranger, turned round to him; both sturdy, hardened, and reckless, clad in leather armor of buffalo skin, with plain hunting knives on their belts. Oleg drove his horse forward, stopped in ten steps from them. The huge hilt of a two-handed sword looked out over his shoulder, an arrow on his bow string aimed at the men. Its iron head had an evil glitter. Both robbers could see the stranger had no light Saracen bow but a formidable lamellar one: an arrow shot from it would go through steel armor.
“Chachar!” Oleg called loudly. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she replied in a thin voice and added hastily, “I’ve gathered many herbs! But these two fools hampered my way back.”
Oleg looked at the robbers, though he’d never really let them out of his sight. “What do you want?”
One glanced at his comrade who froze at spot, his gaze fixed on the arrow. He estimated the distance to Oleg, to their horses left behind the armed stranger with cold green eyes – and spread his arms wide with a smile. “We just wanted to see. If she needs help. People must help each other. It’s what Christ wants, yeah?”
“It’s what all gods want,” Oleg said coldly. “And they want our help to be disinterested.”
The robber, feeling the danger passing by, broadened his smile, backed away from Chachar, trying to reach his own horse in an arc. “Only disinterested! Otherwise it’s no help.”
“And deserves other reward,” Oleg agreed. He turned in his saddle while his horse stood still, watched the robbers round him cautiously, making no spare moves, mount quietly, ride a hundred steps away at a slow pace. Only then they dared to whoop and gallop away.
Oleg turned to Chachar, nodded at her horse that stood behind him still. “Mount! Quick!”
She darted to the horse with exaggerated obedience, climbed into the saddle. Her big eyes were fixed on his angry face. On her back, she had a tightly stuffed bag. Tender stalks with round blue leaves looked out of it through a slit. Oleg said nothing, as he had no wish to praise the woman. She’d try to consolidate her position then. However, he noticed she’d really collected the herbs of great healing power. And picked up in the correct time of the day, which was extremely important.