The Winter of the Witch

24. Turnings

ONCE OLGA WAS SAFE IN the terem of her own palace, Vasya and Sasha changed their filthy dripping clothes and hurried back to the Grand Prince. Vasya threw the fur cloak they’d given her in Midnight about her shoulders; the rain had broken the heat and it was chilly in the wet darkness.

They were let quietly in through the postern and brought up at once, in silence, to Dmitrii’s small antechamber. The wind was roaring through windows flung wide. There were no attendants, only a table ready-laid, with a jar and four cups, and bread and smoked fish and pickled mushrooms. Simple fare, for Sergei’s sake; the old monk was with Dmitrii, waiting for them. He drank honey-wine slowly and he looked very tired.

Dmitrii stood out, vivid and restless, unwearied among the vines and flowers and saints painted on his walls. “Sit, both of you,” he said, when Sasha and Vasya appeared. “I will have to consult with my boyars tomorrow, but first I wish to be decided in my own mind.”

Wine was poured out, and Vasya, who had taken only a few tasteless mouthfuls when they stopped to rest by the river, now made her way steadily through bread and the good oily fish, listening all the while.

“I should have known,” began Dmitrii. “That yellow-haired charlatan, sweeping into Moscow to exorcise the dead things. We thought it was divine power. And all the time he was in league with the devil.”

Vasya wished Dmitrii wouldn’t speak of it. She kept seeing Konstantin’s face as it had looked in the rain.

“We are well rid of him,” Dmitrii continued.

Sergei said, “You have not summoned us all, weary as we are, to gloat.”

“No,” said Dmitrii, his triumphant mood fading. “I have been getting reports—the Tatars are on the lower Volga, marching north. Mamai is still coming. No word of Vladimir Andreevich. The silver—”

“The silver was lost,” said Vasya, remembering.

Every head in the room swiveled.

“Lost in a flood,” she continued. She set aside her cup and straightened her back. “If the silver was your ransom for Muscovy, Dmitrii Ivanovich, then Muscovy has not been ransomed.”

They were still staring. Vasya looked steadily back. “I swear it is true. Do you wish to know how I know?”

“I do not,” said Dmitrii, crossing himself. “I’d rather know more. Is Vladimir dead? Alive? Captured?”

“That I do not know,” said Vasya. She paused. “But I could find out.”

Dmitrii only frowned at that, thoughtfully, and paced the room: grim, restless, leonine. “If my spies confirm what you say about the silver, then I will send word to the princes of Rus’. We have no choice. We have to muster at Kolomna before the dark of the moon, then march south to fight. Or are we to allow all Rus’ to be overrun?” Dmitrii spoke to them all, but his eyes were on Sasha, who had once pleaded with him not to engage the Tatar in the field.

Now Sasha only said, with a grimness to match Dmitrii’s, “Which of the princes will come to the muster?”

“Rostov, Starodub,” said Dmitrii, ticking off the principalities on his fingers. He was still pacing. “The ones in my vassalage. Nizhny Novgorod, for its prince is my father-in-law. Tver, to honor the treaty. But would I had the Prince of Serpukhov. He is clever in council, and loyal, and I will need his men.” He halted in his pacing, his eyes on Vasya.

“What of Oleg of Ryazan?” Sasha asked.

“Oleg won’t come,” said Dmitrii. “Ryazan is too close to Sarai, and Oleg is cautious by nature; he won’t risk it, regardless of what his boyars want. He’ll march with Mamai, if anything. But we’ll fight anyway, without Ryazan and without Serpukhov, if we must. Do we have a choice? We tried ransoming Muscovy, but we could not. Shall we submit, or shall we fight?” This time the question was addressed to all three of them.

No one said anything.

“I will send to the princes tomorrow,” said Dmitrii. “Father”—here he turned to Sergei—“will you come with us, and bless the army?”

“I will, my son,” said Sergei. He sounded weary. “But you know even a victory will cost you.”

“I’d avoid war if I could,” said the Grand Prince. “But I can’t and so—” His face shone. “We will fight at last, after a summer of fear and cringing. God willing, it will be our time to throw off the yoke.”

And God help them all, Vasya thought. When Dmitrii spoke so, they believed him. She knew, without asking, that the princes would come to his mustering. God help us all.

The Grand Prince turned abruptly to Vasya. “I have your brother’s sword,” he said. “And I have the holy father’s blessing. But what will I have from you, Vasilisa Petrovna? I was sorry to think you dead. But then I heard you set fire to my city.”

She got to her feet to face him. “I am guilty before you, Gosudar,” said Vasya. “Yet twice I helped defeat this city’s enemies. The fire was my fault, but the snowstorm that followed—I summoned that, too. As for punishment? I was punished.” She turned her head so the mark on her cheek showed stark in the firelight. Subtly, her hand closed on the carved nightingale in her sleeve, but that was not a sorrow she meant to parade before these men. “What do you want of me?”

“Twice you were nearly burned alive,” said Dmitrii. “Yet you came back, to save this city from evil. Perhaps you should be rewarded. What do you want, Vasilisa Petrovna?”

She knew her answer, and didn’t mince words. “There is a way to know if Vladimir Andreevich is alive or dead. If he is alive, then I am going to find him. You muster in two weeks?”

“Yes,” said Dmitrii warily. “But—”

She cut him off. “I will be there,” she said. “And if Vladimir Andreevich is alive, he will be there too, with his men.”

“Impossible,” said Dmitrii.

Vasya said, “If I succeed, then I will consider my debt paid, to you and to this city. And now? I would ask you for your trust. Not for a boy named Vasilii Petrovich, who never existed, but for myself.”

“Why should I trust you, Vasilisa Petrovna?” asked Dmitrii, but his gaze was intent. “You are a witch.”

“She defended the Church from evil,” said Sergei, and made the sign of the cross. “Strange are the works of God.”

Vasya crossed herself in turn. “Witch I may be, Dmitrii Ivanovich, but the powers of Rus’ must be allies now—prince and Church must join with the unseen world. Otherwise there is no hope of victory.”

First I needed men to help me defeat a devil, she thought. Now I will need devils to help me defeat men.

But who could do it other than she? You can be a bridge between men and chyerti, Morozko had said. She thought she understood that, now.

For a moment, there was no sound but the triumphant wind, pouring in through the windows. Then Dmitrii simply said, “I will trust you.” He laid a light hand on her head, a prince’s blessing on a warrior. She went very still under the touch. “What do you need?”

Vasya thought. She was still glowing with the words, I will trust you. “Clothes such as a tradesman’s son might wear,” she said.

“Cousin,” Sasha broke in. “If she goes, then I must go with her. She’s made enough journeys without her kin.”

Dmitrii looked surprised. “I need you here. You speak Tatar; you know the country between here and Sarai.”

Sasha said nothing.

Understanding came suddenly into Dmitrii’s face. Perhaps he had remembered the night of the fire, Sasha’s sister forced out into the dark alone. “I will not stop you, Sasha,” he said reluctantly. “But you must be at the mustering, whether she succeeds or no.”

“Sasha—” Vasya began, just as he went to her and said, low, “I wept for you. Even when Varvara told me you were alive, I wept. I despised myself, that I had let my sister face such horror alone, and I despised myself more when you appeared again at my campfire so changed. I am not letting you go alone.”

Vasya put a hand on her brother’s arm. “Then, if you come with me tonight—” Her grip tightened; their eyes met. “I warn you, the road leads through darkness.”

Sasha said, “Then we will go through darkness, sister.”

WHEN THEY GOT BACK to Olga’s palace, Varvara was waiting for them at the bathhouse. Sasha bathed hastily and sought his bed. Midnight would come soon: the hour of their departure. But Vasya lingered. “I never said thank you,” she told Varvara. “For that night on the river. You saved my life.”

“I would not have,” said Varvara. “I didn’t know what I could do for you but mourn. But Polunochnitsa spoke to me. I had not heard her voice for so long. She told me what was wanted, and so I went down to the burning.”

“Varvara,” said Vasya. “In the country of Midnight—I met your mother.”

Varvara’s lips tightened. “I suppose she thought you were Tamara over again. Only a daughter she could control, one who was not in love with a sorcerer.”

Vasya had no answer to that. Instead she said, “Why did you come to Moscow at all? Why be a servant?”

Old anger showed in Varvara’s face. “I have not the gift of seeing,” she said. “I cannot see chyerti; I can hear the stronger ones and speak a little of the speech of horses, that is all. There was no wonder for me in my mother’s kingdom, only cold and danger and isolation, and later my mother’s wrath. She had dealt too harshly with Tamara. So, I left her, went in search of my sister. In time I came to Moscow, this city of men. I found Tamara there, but already beyond my aid, dim and wandering, bowed down by grief beyond her strength. She had borne a child, that I protected as I could.” Vasya nodded. “But when the child went north to marry, I did not follow. She had her nurse, and her husband was a good man. I didn’t want to live in another land with only forest and no people. I liked the sound of the bells, the color and hurry of Moscow. So I stayed, and waited. In time, another girl of my blood came, and I grew whole again, caring for your sister and her children.”

“Why be a servant, though?”

“Do you ask?” Varvara demanded. “Servants have more freedom than noblewomen. I could walk about as I wished, go into the sun with my head uncovered. I was happy. Witches die alone. My mother and my sister showed me that. Has your gift brought you any happiness, fire-maiden?”

“It has,” said Vasya, without elaborating. “But grief as well.” A little anger threaded her voice. “Since you knew them both—Tamara and Kasyan—why did you do nothing for her, after she died? Why did you not warn us, when Kasyan came to Moscow?”

Varvara did not move, but suddenly her face showed sharp lines and hollows; the echoes of old grief. “I knew my sister haunted the palace; I could not get her to go, and I did not know why she lingered. Kasyan I did not know when he came. He wore a different face in Moscow than the one he wore when he seduced Tamara by the lake at Midsummer.”

She must have seen the doubt in Vasya’s eyes, for she burst out, “I am not like you, with your immortal eyes, your mad courage. I am only a woman, unworthy of my bloodlines, who has done what I could to care for my own.”

Vasya said nothing to that but put out a hand, and took Varvara’s in hers, and neither of them spoke a moment. Then Vasya said, with effort, “Will you tell my sister?”

Varvara had her mouth open on what was obviously a sharp reply—and then she hesitated. “I never dared before,” said Varvara grudgingly. There was a thread of doubt now in her voice. “Why would she believe me? I do not appear old enough to be anyone’s great-aunt.”

“I think Olga has seen enough wonders lately to believe you,” said Vasya. “I think you should tell her; it would give her joy. Although I see your point.” Vasya looked at Varvara with new eyes. Her body was strong, her hair yellow, barely touched with white. “How old are you?”

Varvara shrugged. “I don’t know. Older than I look. Our mother never told me who sired us. But I always assumed my long life was some gift of his. Whoever he was. I am happy here, truly, Vasilisa Petrovna. I never wanted power, only folk to care for. Save Moscow for them, and take my wild Marya somewhere she can breathe, and I will be content.”

Vasya smiled. “I will do that—Aunt.”

VARVARA LEFT, AND VASYA finished her bath and dressed. Clean, she stepped out into the covered walkway that connected the bathhouse to the terem. The rain was still falling, but more gently. The lightning was sparser now as the storm moved on.

It took Vasya a moment to pick out the shadow. She stilled, the bathhouse door rough at her back.

Thin-voiced, she spoke. “Is it done?”

“It is done,” Morozko returned. “He is bound by my power, by his own votary’s sacrifice, and by Kaschei’s golden bridle: all three together. He will never win free again.” The rain fell cold now, beating down summer’s dust.

Vasya let go the door. The rain whispered on the roof. She crossed the walkway, until she could see his face, until she could ask a question that troubled her. “What did the Bear mean,” she asked, “when he said please?”

Morozko frowned, but rather than answer in words, he lifted his cupped hand. Water collected in his palm. “I wondered if you would ask,” he said. “Give me your hand.”

Vasya did. He let the water run lightly over the cuts on her arm and fingers. They healed with that startling spear of agony, there and gone. She jerked her hand back.

“Water of death,” said Morozko, letting the remaining droplets scatter. “That is my power. I can restore flesh, living or dead.”

She’d known he could heal since the first night she met him and he healed her frostbite. But she hadn’t connected it to the fairy tale, hadn’t considered—

“You said you could only heal wounds that you’d inflicted.”

“I did.”

“Another lie?”

His mouth set hard. “A part of the truth.”

“The Bear wanted you to save Konstantin’s life?”

“Not save it,” he said. “I can mend flesh, but he was already too far gone. Medved wanted me to mend the priest’s flesh, so he could bring him back. Together, my brother and I can restore the dead, for Medved’s gift is the water of life. That is why he said please.”

Frowning, Vasya considered her healed fingers, the scars on palm and wrist.

“But,” Morozko added, “we never act together. Why would we? He is monstrous, he and his power both.”

“The Bear mourned,” said Vasya. “He mourned when Father Konstantin—”

Morozko made a sound of impatience. “The wicked can still mourn, Vasya.”

She didn’t reply. She stood still, while the rain fell all around them, overwhelmed again by all the things she didn’t know. The winter-king was part of the lingering storm; his humanity only a shadow of his true self, his power rising as summer waned. His eyes glittered in the darkness. Yet he had cared for her, schemed for her. Why should she give the Bear or Konstantin a passing thought? They were murderers both, and they were both gone.

Shaking off her unease, she said, “Will you come meet my sister? I promised.”

Morozko looked surprised. “Come to her as your suitor and ask her permission?” he asked. “Will it change anything? It might make it worse.”

“Still,” said Vasya. “Otherwise I—”

“I am not a man, Vasya,” he said. “No sacrament will bind me; I cannot marry you under the laws of your god or your people. If you are looking for honor in your sister’s eyes, you will not find it.”

She had known that was true. But— “I’d like you to meet her anyway,” said Vasya. “At least—perhaps she will not fear for me.”

There was a silence and then she realized that he was shaking with silent laughter. She crossed her arms, offended.

He looked at her, crystalline-eyed. “I am not likely to reassure anyone’s sister,” he said, when he stopped laughing. “But I will, if you like.”

OLGA WAS IN MARYA’S CHAMBER, watching over the child’s sleep. The marks of long strain shadowed the girl’s pale, pinched face. She had taken on too great a labor too young, and Olga looked scarcely less weary.

Vasya halted in the doorway, suddenly unsure of her welcome.

The bed was covered in feather-stuffed ticking, with furs and woven wool. For a moment, Vasya wanted to be a child again, to fall into bed beside Marya and go to sleep while her sister stroked her hair. But Olga turned at Vasya’s soft-footed approach, and the wish vanished. One could not go backward.

Vasya crossed the room, touched Marya’s cheek. “Will she be all right?” Vasya asked.

“She is only tired, I think,” said Olga.

“She was very brave,” said Vasya.

Olga smoothed her daughter’s hair and said nothing.

“Olya,” Vasya said awkwardly. All the composure she’d found in Dmitrii’s hall seemed to have deserted her. “I—I told you that you would meet him. If you wish.”

Olga frowned. “Him, Vasya?”

“You asked. He is here. Will you see him?”

Morozko did not wait for an answer, nor did he walk through the door like a person. He simply stepped out of the shadows. The domovoi had been sitting beside the stove; now he shot to his feet, bristling; Marya stirred in her sleep.

“I mean them no harm, little one,” said Morozko, speaking first to the domovoi.

Olga had lurched to her feet too; she was standing in front of Marya’s bed as though to defend her child from evil. Vasya, stiff with apprehension, suddenly saw the frost-demon as her sister did: a cold-eyed shadow. She began to doubt her own course. Morozko turned away from the domovoi, bowed to Olga.

“I know you,” Olga whispered. “Why have you come here?”

“Not for a life,” Morozko said. His voice was even, but Vasya felt him wary.

Olga said to Vasya, “I remember him. I remember. He took my daughter away.”

“No—he—” began Vasya, clumsily, and Morozko shot her a hard look. She subsided.

His face was unchanged, but his whole body was taut with strain. Vasya understood why. He’d wanted to go near enough to humanity to be remembered, so he could go on existing. But Vasya had pulled him nearer and nearer still, like a moth to a candle-flame. Now he must look at Olga, understand the torment in her eyes, and carry it with him down the long roads of his life.

He didn’t want to. But he didn’t move.

“It is little comfort,” Morozko said carefully. “But your elder daughter has a long life before her. And the younger—I will remember her.”

“You are a devil,” said Olga. “My little girl didn’t even have a name.”

“I will remember her regardless,” said the winter-king.

Olga stared at him a moment and then suddenly broke; her whole body bowed with grief. She put her face in her hands.

Vasya, feeling helpless, went to her sister, wrapped tentative arms about her. “Olya?” she said. “Olya, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Olga made no answer and Morozko stood where he was. He did not speak again.

There was a long silence. Olga took a deep breath. Her eyes were wet. “I never wept,” she said. “Not since the night I lost her.”

Vasya held her sister tightly.

Olga gently put Vasya’s arms aside. “Why my sister?” she asked Morozko. “Why, of all the women in the world?”

“For her blood,” said Morozko. “But later for her courage.”

“Have you anything to offer her?” Olga asked him. And, with an edge, “Besides whispers in the dark?”

Vasya bit back her sound of protest. If the question took Morozko aback, it didn’t show. “All the lands of winter,” he said. “The black trees and the silver frost. Gold and riches made by men; she may fill her hands with wealth, if she desires it.”

“Will you deny her the spring and the summer?”

“I will deny her nothing. But there are places she can go where I cannot easily follow.”

“He is not a man,” Olga said to Vasya, not taking her eyes off the winter-king. “He will not be a husband to you.”

Vasya bowed her head. “I have never wanted a husband. He came with me out of winter, for Moscow’s sake. It is enough.”

“And you think he won’t hurt you, in the end? Remember the dead girl in the fairy tale!”

“I am not she,” said Vasya.

“What if this—liaison means your damnation?”

“I am damned already,” Vasya said. “By every law of God and man. But I do not wish to be alone.”

Olga sighed and said sadly, “As you say, sister.” Abruptly, she said, “Very well. My blessing on you both—now send him away.”

VASYA FOLLOWED MOROZKO OUT. He even went through the door this time, in ordinary fashion. But when he was outside, he halted, head bowed, like a man after hard labor.

He managed to say to her through gritted teeth, “The bathhouse.” She took his hand and pulled him there with her, shut the door on darkness, forgot a candle wasn’t burning. Four flared up at once. He sank to one of the benches of the outer room and drew a shuddering breath. A bathhouse was a place of birth and of death, of transformation and of magic, and perhaps of memory. He could breathe easier there. But—

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. “I cannot stay,” he said instead. His eyes were pale as water, his hands locked together, the bones of them stark in the candlelight. “I cannot. It is not my time yet, here. I must go back to my own lands. I—” He broke off, then said, “I am winter, and have been too long separate from myself.”

“Is that the only reason?” she asked.

He wasn’t looking at her now. Forcibly, he relaxed his clenched hands, laid them on his knees. Almost inaudibly, he said, “I cannot learn any more names. It draws me too near—”

“Too near what? Mortality? Can you become mortal?” she asked.

He was taken aback. “How? I am not made of flesh. But it—tears at me.”

“Then it will always tear at you, I think,” said Vasya. “So long as we—unless—you forget me.”

He rose to his feet. “I have made that choice already,” he said. “But I must return to my own lands. You are not the only one who can be driven mad with impossibilities; I cannot endure this one anymore. I do not belong in the summertime world. Vasya, you have done all you must. Come with me.”

At his words, a bolt of longing tore through her, for blue skies and deep snow, for wild places and for silence, for his fire-lit house in the fir-grove, for his hands in the darkness. She could go with him, and leave all the doings of men behind her, leave this city that had cost Solovey his life.

But even as she thought it, she said, “I can’t. It isn’t over.”

“Your part in this is over. If Dmitrii fights the Tatars, then that is a war of men, and not of chyerti.”

“A war the Bear brought about!”

“A war that might have happened anyway,” retorted Morozko. “A war that’s been threatening for years.”

She put a hand to her cheek, where lay the scar from a stone flung as she was led to her death. “I know,” she said. “But I am Russian, and they are my people.”

“They put you in the fire,” said Morozko. “You owe them nothing. Come with me.”

“But—who will I be, if I go with you?” she demanded. “Just a snow-maiden, the winter-king’s bride, forgotten by the whole world, just like you!”

She saw him flinch at the words. Biting her lips, she asked, in a calmer voice, “Who am I, if I cannot help my people?”

“Your people are more than a single, ill-conceived battle.”

“You freed your brother because you thought I could keep the chyerti from fading out of the world. Perhaps I can. But the other Rus’—the Rus’ of men and women—paid the price, and I am going to make it right again. The Bear’s mischief did not end with Moscow; my task is not over.”

“And if it gets you killed? Do you think I want to bear you away into the dark and then never see you again?”

“I know you don’t.” She dragged in a deep breath. “But I still have to try.”

For her sake, Morozko had made common cause with her brother, asked her sister’s forgiveness, gone into Moscow in summer, bound the Bear. But she had reached the limits of both his strength and his will. He would not fight Dmitrii’s war.

She would, though. Because she wanted to be more than a snow-maiden. She wanted Dmitrii’s faith, and his hand on her head. She wanted a victory, brought about by her courage.

But she also wanted the winter-king. In the smoke and dust and stink of Moscow, he was a breath of pine and cold water and stillness. She could not think for wanting him.

He saw her waver. Their eyes met in the darkness, and he closed the distance between them.

He wasn’t gentle. He was angry, and so was she, baffled and wanting, and their hands were rough on each other’s skin. When she kissed him, he felt like flesh under her hands, drawn sharply into reality by the place and the hour, and by her own passion. The silence stretched out, as their hands said the things they could not, and Vasya almost told him yes then. She almost let him carry her to his white horse, bear her away into the night. She didn’t want to think anymore.

But she must think. Tamara had let her own demon lull her with dreams of love until she’d lost everything that mattered.

She wasn’t Tamara. Vasya yanked away, gasping for breath, and he let her go.

“Go back to winter then,” she heard herself saying, her voice hoarse. “I am taking the road through Midnight to find my brother-in-law, if he is alive. I am going to help Dmitrii Ivanovich win his war.”

Morozko stood still. Slowly the anger and confusion and desire faded from his expression. “Vladimir Andreevich is alive,” he said only. “But I do not know where he is. Vasya—I cannot walk this road beside you.”

“I will find him,” said Vasya.

“You will find him,” Morozko said, with weary certainty. He bowed, remote, any feeling locked deep in his eyes. “Look for me at the first frost.”

He slipped out of the bathhouse like a wraith. She hurried to follow, angry still, but not wanting him to go like that, with a wound unhealed between them. She’d pitched him against his own nature, a foe that was too great.

He went out into the dooryard, and raised his face to the night. For an instant, the wind was the true deep wind of winter that freezes the breath in your nostrils.

Suddenly he turned back to her, and the feeling was there again in his face, as though he could not help it.

“Be well, and do not forget, Snegurochka,” he said.

“I will not. Morozko—”

He was only half there; the wind seemed to blow through him.

“As I could, I loved you too,” she whispered.

Their eyes met. Then he was gone, gone on the rising wind, blown through the wild air.

25. The Road Through Darkness

SASHA AND VASYA LEFT JUST before midnight.

“I am sorry,” Sasha said to Olga before they left. “For what I said, at our last parting.”

Olga almost smiled, but the corners of her mouth turned down. “I was angry too. You’d think I’d be used to farewells, brother.”

“If it goes ill for us in the south,” said Sasha, “you mustn’t stay in Moscow. Take the children to Lesnaya Zemlya.”

“I know,” said the Princess of Serpukhov, and brother and sister exchanged grim glances. Olga had lived through three sieges; Sasha had been fighting Dmitrii’s battles since the two were scarcely out of boyhood.

Watching them, Vasya was reminded, uncomfortably, that though she had seen much, she had never seen war.

“Go with God, both of you,” said Olga.

Vasya and Sasha slipped out of Moscow. Below the gate, the posad slept. The swift, cold wind had driven out the reek of sickness. At least the dead would lie quiet.

Vasya led her brother into the woods, to the same place where Varvara had first sent her through Midnight—how long ago had it been? Two seasons had passed in Rus’ since that night, but Vasya had lost count of the days she’d lived herself.

Somewhere in Moscow, a bell rang. The city walls loomed white beyond the trees. Vasya took her brother’s hand. It was midnight. The darkness took on a wilder texture: a new menace and a deeper beauty. She stepped forward, pulling her brother with her. “Think of our cousin,” she said. One step, two, and then Sasha let out a soft, shocked breath.

Moscow was gone. They stood in a sparse elm-copse, dry and warm. There was dust instead of mud between Vasya’s bare toes, and the big late-summer stars hung low overhead. A different midnight.

“Mother of God,” Sasha whispered. “These are the woods near Serpukhov.”

“I told you,” said Vasya. “It is a swift road, but—” She broke off.

The black stallion Voron emerged from between two trees. His rider’s morning-star eyes glowed in the darkness.

Sasha’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. Perhaps the country of Midnight had wakened something in his blood, for he could see horse and rider. “That is Lady Midnight,” said Vasya, not taking her eyes off the chyert. “This is her realm.” She inclined her head.

Sasha crossed himself. Polunochnitsa smiled at him, mocking, and slid down from her horse’s back.

“God be with you,” Sasha said, cautiously.

“I certainly hope not,” returned Polunochnitsa. Voron tossed his black head, his ears set unhappily. Turning to Vasya, Midnight said, “In my realm again? And proud of your victory?”

“We did win,” Vasya said, wary.

“No,” said Midnight. “You didn’t. What do you think the real battle is, you arrogant fool? You never understood, did you?”

Vasya said nothing.

Between her teeth, Midnight said, “We hoped—I hoped—that you were different. That you would break their endless round of revenge and imprisonment. But you encouraged their war, those idiot twins.”

“What are you talking about?” Vasya demanded. “We saved Moscow from the dead. I do not know why you are angry. He is wicked, the Bear. Wicked. Now he is bound. Rus’ is safe.”

“Is it?” Midnight asked. “You still don’t understand.” Fury and disgust and—disappointment—snapped in her eyes. “You cannot rule the chyerti, or keep the house by the lake, or save us from fading out of life. You failed. The way to the lake is shut to you; I am shutting it, and risking the old woman’s wrath. She will have no heir. Farewell, Vasilisa Petrovna.”

Then she was gone fast as she’d appeared, a whirl of pale hair, vaulting to Voron’s back. The last Vasya heard of her was the sound of fading hoofbeats. Shaken, Vasya stared at the place where she’d been. Sasha looked merely puzzled. “What did that mean?”

“I do not understand why she is angry,” said Vasya. But she was uneasy. “We have to go on. Follow me close. We must not be separated.”

They walked cautiously, for Vasya feared Midnight’s anger, in this place of her power. Sasha followed her, starting at shadows, bewildered by the changing nights. But still he followed her. He trusted her.

Vasya blamed herself, later.

26. The Golden Horde

THEY HAD NO WARNING. THEY saw no gleam from far off, heard no noise. They merely stepped suddenly from darkness, into firelight filled with laughter.

For an instant, they both froze.

The revelers froze too. Vasya had a brief impression of weapons: curved swords and short bows unstrung. She could smell horses, see the shine of their eyes, watching from beyond the firelight.

All around them, men sprang to their feet. They weren’t speaking Russian. It sounded like the words she’d heard once on a dark winter night when she’d rescued girls from—from—

“Get back!” Vasya said to Sasha. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed pale hair, Midnight’s set, triumphant face. She thought she heard a whisper: “Learn or die, Vasilisa Petrovna.”

Swords in a dozen men’s hands. Her brother’s sword reflected the firelight when he drew it. “Tatars!” Sasha snapped. “Vasya, go.”

“No!” She was still trying to pull him back. “No, we must only walk back into Midnight—” But the men were closing in around them; she could not see the Midnight-road. “Vasya,” said Sasha in a voice more terrible for its calm, “I am a monk; they will not kill me. But you…Run. Run!” He drove himself at the men, knocking them aside. She backed away from the melee, willed the campfire into a sudden storm of light. The renewed fire drove the Tatars back just as her brother’s sword met another, sparking.

There was the Midnight-road, just beyond the light. The fire flared again, frightening the men, and she called, “Sasha, this way—”

Or started to say. For the hilt of a sword caught her on the temple, and the world went dark.

SASHA, SEEING HIS SISTER FALL, dropped his sword and said, in Tatar, to the man who had struck her down, “I am a man of God, and that is my servant. Do not hurt him.”

“Indeed, you are a man of God,” returned the Tatar. He spoke Russian, lightly accented. “You are Aleksandr Peresvet. But this is not your servant.”

The voice was vaguely familiar, but Sasha could not see the Tatar’s face. The man stood over Vasya, on the other side of the fire, and pulled the girl upright. Her eyelids fluttered; a gash across her forehead poured a maze of blood across her face.

“This is your witch of a sister,” said the Tatar. He sounded both pleased and mystified. “How came you both here? Spying for Dmitrii? Why would he spend his cousins, so?”

Shocked silent, Sasha said nothing. He’d recognized the other man. “Come on,” added the Tatar in his own tongue. He heaved Vasya over his shoulder. “Tie the monk’s hands, and follow me. The general will want to know of this.”

SOMEONE WAS CARRYING HER. Every footfall jarred her head. She vomited. Pain like shards of ice shot through her skull. The man carrying her exclaimed in disgust. “Do that again,” said a half-familiar voice, “and I’ll beat you myself, when the general’s done.”

She tried to look about her, seeking for the Midnight-road. But she couldn’t see it. She must have lost it when she fell unconscious. Now the night was drawing on and she and Sasha were trapped until the next day’s midnight.

Her senses swam. She couldn’t make herself and her brother disappear under the eyes of the entire camp. Maybe she could—but even as she tried to plan, her thoughts fractured.

Something loomed before her, dimly seen, just as she drifted back to awareness. It was a round building, made of felt. A flap was thrust aside and she was borne through the gap. Terror locked her throat and stomach. Where was her brother?

Men inside—she couldn’t tell how many. Two stood in the center, finely dressed, illuminated by a small stove and a hanging lamp. The person carrying her let her fall. Floundering, she managed to drag herself to her knees. She had an impression of wealth: the lamp was of worked silver; there was a smell of fat meat and carpet under her knees. All around was the disorienting buzz of a tongue she didn’t understand. Sasha was thrown down beside her.

One of the finely dressed men was a Tatar. The other was a Russian; it was he who spoke first. “What is this?” he asked.

“This—” echoed that almost-familiar voice from behind her. Vasya tried to twist around and had to freeze, gasping, at the pain in her head. But then the man stepped forward, and she could see his face. She knew him. He had nearly killed her once, in a forest outside Moscow. With the help of a wicked sorcerer, he had nearly deposed Dmitrii Ivanovich.

“It seems,” said Chelubey in Russian, smiling at her, “that Dmitrii Ivanovich has devised a novel means to rid himself of his cousins.”

THE TALL ONE, the one they were calling temnik—general—had to be Mamai, though Sasha knew him by reputation only. He didn’t recognize the Russian.

“Cousins?” asked the temnik, in his own tongue. Mamai was a man in his middle years, weary, dignified, gray. He’d been loyal to Berdi Beg, one of the innumerable khans, but Berdi held the throne for only two years. Mamai had been plotting to regain his lost position ever since, hampered by the fact that he himself was not descended from the Great Khan. Sasha knew—probably the Tatar’s whole army knew—that Mamai had to defeat Dmitrii decisively, or a rival faction in the warring Horde would rise up and make an end of him.

Men with everything at stake were dangerous.

“This man is the holy Aleksandr Peresvet—surely you have heard of him,” said Chelubey, but his eyes were on Vasya. “And this other one—when I first met him in Moscow, they told me he was highborn: Aleksandr Peresvet’s brother. That was a lie.” Softly, Chelubey continued, “This is not a boy at all but a girl—a little witch-girl. Disguised as a boy, she deceived all Moscow. I wonder very much why Dmitrii has sent them here—a witch and a monk. Spies? Will you tell me, devushka?” The last question was put to Vasya, almost gently. But Sasha heard the menace behind it.

His sister met Chelubey’s eyes, wordless. Her eyes were wide and terrified; her face bloody. “You hurt me,” she whispered, in a trembling, abject tone Sasha had never heard from her in his life.

“I’ll hurt you worse,” said Chelubey placidly. It wasn’t a threat so much as a statement of fact. “Why are you here?”

“We were set upon,” she whispered, voice still quivering. “Our men were killed. We came toward the fire for help.” Her eyes were vast and dark, confused and terrified, her cheek crusted with blood. She bowed her head, and then looked up at Chelubey again. This time two tears cut tracks in the blood on her face.

Sasha thought she was overdoing it, playing the helpless girl, but then she saw Chelubey’s face slide from wariness to contempt. In his mind, he breathed a prayer of gratitude. Drawing Chelubey’s attention back to himself, he said, “Don’t frighten her. We came upon you by accident. We are not spies.”

“Indeed,” said Chelubey silkily, turning. “And is your sister also traveling with you, alone, dressed so immodestly, by accident?”

“I was taking her to a convent,” lied Sasha. “The Grand Prince desired it of me. Our train was set upon by robbers; we were left alone, without succor. They tore her dress; they left us with nothing, save what you see. We wandered hungry for some days, saw your fires and came. We thought to receive help, not indignities.”

“It puzzles me, though,” said Chelubey with acid irony. “Why is the nearest adviser of the Grand Prince of Moscow taking his sister to a house of religion at such a time?”

“I advised Dmitrii Ivanovich against going to war,” said Sasha. “In anger, he ordered me from his side.”

“Well,” broke in Mamai briskly, “if that is so, then you will have no difficulty informing us of your cousin’s intentions and dispositions, so you can get back to praying.”

“I know nothing of Dmitrii’s dispositions,” said Sasha. “I told you—”

Chelubey backhanded him across the face, hard enough to send him to the floor. Vasya cried out and threw herself at Chelubey’s feet, getting in his way before he could kick Sasha in the stomach. “Please,” she cried. “Please, don’t hurt him.”

Chelubey shook her off, but stared frowning down as she knelt before him, hands clasped. Vasya would never be taken for a beautiful woman, but her bold bones and vast eyes caught the gaze somehow, and held it. Sasha, his lips bleeding, was disturbed to see the men’s attention once more on her, in a way it hadn’t been before. And she was encouraging them, damn her, to keep them from him.

“Forgive me,” said Chelubey calmly, “if I don’t believe your brother.”

“He has only spoken the truth,” she whispered, her voice small.

Mamai turned abruptly to the Russian. “What say you, Oleg Ivanovich? Are they lying?”

The Russian’s bearded face was quite inscrutable, but Sasha recognized the name. The Grand Prince of Ryazan, who had sided with the Tatar.

Oleg pressed his lips together. “I cannot say if they’re lying. But the monk’s tale seems more likely than not. Why would Dmitrii Ivanovich send two of his own cousins to spy, and one a girl dressed as a man?” His glance at Vasya was wholly disapproving.

“She is a witch; she has strange powers,” insisted Chelubey. “She made our campfire burn unnaturally; she bewitched my horse in Moscow.”

All eyes went to Vasya. Her gaze was unfocused; her lips trembled. Blood still welled from the cut in her head, and a lump was forming. She was crying softly.

“Indeed,” said Oleg after a telling silence. “She is a fearful sight. What is the girl’s name?” The last was in Russian.

Vasya looked blank and didn’t answer. Chelubey raised his hand once more, but Oleg’s voice caught him before the blow fell. “Do you strike bound girls now?”

“I told you,” said Chelubey, angry. “She is a witch!”

“I see no evidence of it,” said Oleg. “I will add that it is late, and perhaps we can determine their fate in the morning.”

“I will occupy myself with them,” said Chelubey. In his eyes was an eager light, the memory of Moscow’s humiliations fresh. Perhaps he was curious about the green-eyed girl who dressed as a boy. Perhaps he’d even been there, on the river that day, when Kasyan exposed her secret before all Moscow, in the cruelest way possible. “Dmitrii Ivanovich will ransom her,” said Sasha. “If she is unharmed.”

They ignored him.

“Very well,” said Mamai. “Occupy yourself with them and tell me what you learn. Oleg Ivanovich—”

“The Metropolitan will have something to say if he dies under torture,” said Oleg. Sasha took a steadying breath.

“See that he lives,” Mamai added to Chelubey.

“General,” Oleg said to Mamai, his eyes on Vasya once more, “I will keep the girl with me this night. Perhaps, separated from her brother, alone and afraid, she will say more to me.”

Chelubey looked put out. He had his mouth open to speak, but Mamai forestalled him, looking amused. “As you like. Skinny though, isn’t she?”

Oleg bowed and hauled Vasya to her feet. Vasya hadn’t understood most of the conversation as it had been largely in Tatar. Her eyes locked on Sasha. “Don’t be afraid,” he said.

Cold comfort. She wasn’t afraid for herself; she was afraid for him.

27. Oleg of Ryazan

OUTSIDE MAMAI’S TENT, OLEG HISSED between his teeth. Two armed men appeared and followed them. They looked Vasya over curiously, before schooling their faces to blankness. She was terrified for her brother. It had all happened too fast. Midnight might mock and threaten, but Vasya had never dreamed that her great-grandmother’s servant would betray her to the Tatars. Why, in God’s name?

You failed, Midnight had said.

Oleg pulled her onward. She tried to think. If she could get herself away, could she come back for her brother at the next day’s midnight? In this great camp, face sticky with blood, magic seemed as distant as the uncaring stars.

Another round tent, smaller than Mamai’s, loomed out of the dark. Oleg thrust her through the flap, followed her in, dismissed his dubious-looking attendants.

No stove this time, and only a single clay lamp. She had a brief impression of an austere space, a neat heap of furs, and then Oleg spoke. “Traveling to a convent, are you? Dressed so? Set upon by bandits? Then you and your brother were foolish enough to stumble on Chelubey’s fire? Am I a fool? Tell me the truth, girl.”

She tried to collect her wits. “My brother told you the truth,” she said.

“You’re no coward, I’ll give you that.” His voice quieted. “Devushka, I can help you. But I must have the truth.”

Vasya let her eyes fill. It wasn’t difficult. Her head ached abominably. “We told you,” she whispered again.

“Fine,” said Oleg. “Just as you like. I will give you back to Chelubey tomorrow and he will get the truth out of you.” He sat down to take off his boots.

Vasya watched him a moment. “You are a man of Rus’, fighting on the enemy’s side,” she said. “Do you expect me to trust you?”

Oleg looked up. “I am fighting beside the Horde,” he said very precisely, laying a boot aside. “Because I am not eager, as Dmitrii Ivanovich seems to be, to have my city razed, my people carried off as slaves. That doesn’t mean I cannot help you. Nor does it mean that I won’t see you suffer greatly if you cross me.”

The second boot joined the first, and then he pulled his cap off, tossed it on the heap of furs. He looked her over, his glance appraising. Forget, she thought. Forget he can see you— But she couldn’t focus her mind; there was a white-hot bar of pain in her head. His feet bare, Oleg stalked over to her. Wordless, he took her bound wrists in one hand and felt her over for other weapons with the other. She was unarmed. Someone had taken her knife, after she was struck down beside Chelubey’s fire. “Well,” he said, as he ran his hands down her body, “I suppose you are a girl after all.”

She stamped on his foot. He struck her across the face.

When she came to, she found herself sprawled on the ground. He’d cut her bonds. She raised her head. He was sitting on his heap of furs, running a whetstone over the unsheathed sword across his knees.

“Awake?” he said. “Let’s start again. Tell me the truth, devushka.”

She hauled herself laboriously to her feet. “Or what? Are you going to torture me?”

A flicker of distaste crossed his face. “It might not occur to you, determined as you are to suffer nobly, but you are better off with me than with Chelubey. He was shamed in Moscow; the whole army knows the tale. He will torture you. And if he is feeling inspired, perhaps he will force you in front of your brother, to pass along a little share of the humiliation.”

“Is that my choice then? Be raped publicly there or privately here?”

He snorted. “Fortunately for you, I prefer women who look and behave like women. Tell me what I want to know, and I will protect you from Chelubey.”

Their eyes locked. Vasya took a deep breath, and gambled. “I have a message from the Grand Prince of Moscow.”

His features sharpened. “Do you? Strange choice of messenger.”

She shrugged. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Oleg laid sword and whetstone aside. “That is true. But perhaps you are lying. Have you a token? If so, did you eat it? I’ll swear it’s not on you now.”

She didn’t know if she could do it. But she made her voice steady when she said, “I have a sign.”

“Very well. Show me.”

“I will,” she said. “If you tell me why Chelubey said that Dmitrii Ivanovich had devised a novel way to get rid of his cousins.”

Oleg shrugged. “The Prince of Serpukhov is a prisoner here as well. Wasn’t Dmitrii wondering where he had got to?” Oleg paused. “Ah. Messenger, are you? Or a rescue party? Either way it seems unlikely.”

Vasya didn’t reply.

“In any case it was bad planning on Dmitrii’s part,” finished Oleg. “Now Mamai has three of his first cousins.” He crossed his arms. “Now. What is this sign of yours?”

Ignoring her splitting headache, Vasya cupped her hands and filled them with the memory of fire.

Swearing, Oleg scrambled up and back from the fire in her fingers.

She was still kneeling on the floor; she looked up at him through the flames. “Oleg Ivanovich, Mamai is going to lose this war.”

“A ragtag army of Rus’ is going to lose to the Golden Horde?” But Oleg’s voice was thin and breathless; his eyes were on the flames. He reached out to touch, then jerked back at the heat. The fire didn’t hurt her, though she could see the hairs on her arms crisping. “A fine trick,” he said. “Has Dmitrii made alliance with devils? It won’t defeat an army. Do you know how many horses Mamai has? How many arrows, how many men? If every man in Rus’ fought on Dmitrii’s side, he’d still be outnumbered two to one.”

But Oleg did not take his eyes off Vasya’s hands.

Vasya was straining every nerve, through pain, through headache, to keep her face unruffled, to keep steady the memory of fire. Oleg had sided with the enemy to protect his people. A practical man. One she could perhaps reason with. “Tricks with fire?” she said. “Is that what you think? No. Fire and water and darkness all together; the old powers of this land are going to battle alongside the new.” She hoped it was true. “Your general is going to lose. I am the sign of it, and the proof.”

“That Dmitrii Ivanovich has sold his soul for black sorcery?” Oleg made the sign of the cross.

“Is it black sorcery to defend the soil that bore us?” She shut her hands abruptly, extinguishing the flames. “Why did you take me from Chelubey, Oleg Ivanovich?”

“Misplaced kindness,” said Oleg. “Also, I do not like Chelubey.” He reached out a flinching hand to touch her palms, which were quite cool.

“Dmitrii’s side has powers you cannot see,” she said. “We have powers you cannot see. Better to fight for your own, Oleg Ivanovich, than defend a conqueror. Will you help me?”

She could have sworn he hesitated. Then a bitter smile spread over his face. “You are very persuasive. Now I could almost believe that Dmitrii sent you. He is cleverer than I gave him credit for. But it has been a long time since I believed in fairy tales, devushka. I will do this much. I will tell Mamai that you are only a foolish convent-bound girl, that you should be given into my household instead of sold as a slave. You may do your fire-tricks for me, in Ryazan, after the war is over. Don’t let anyone see you doing them. The Tatars have a horror of witches.”

The agony in her head was rising again. Darkness came up at the edges of her vision. She caught his wrist. Tricks, gambles, deceptions deserted her. “Please,” she said.

Through the mists of gathering unconsciousness she heard his whispered reply. “I will make you this bargain: if you, alone, can find and save your brother and the Prince of Serpukhov—and do it in such a way as to make my men and my boyars question their allegiance—then perhaps that will be sign enough and I will heed you. Until then, I am for the Tatar.”

SHE WASN’T SURE IF she slept that night, or if the pain in her head had merely sent her back into unconsciousness. Her dreams were shot through with faces, all watching her, waiting. Morozko troubled, the Bear intent, Midnight angry. Her great-grandmother, the madwoman lost in Midnight. You passed three fires, but you did not understand the final riddle.

And then she dreamed of her brother, tortured, until Chelubey, laughing, killed him.

She came gasping awake, in the darkness before dawn, to find herself lying in warmth and softness. Someone had even wiped the crusted blood from her face. She lay still. Her headache had subsided to a dull murmur. She turned her head and saw Oleg, lying awake beside her, on his stomach, watching her. “How does one learn to cup fire in one’s hands?” he asked, as though continuing a conversation from the night before.

The pale light of early dawn was seeping in around them. They were sharing a pile of furs. She shot upright.

He failed to move. “Outraged virtue? After you appear in a Tatar camp at midnight dressed as a boy?”

She was out from under the furs like a cat, and perhaps the look on her face convinced him for he added mildly, looking amused, “Do you think I’d touch you, witch? But it’s a long time since I slept warm with a girl, even a bony one. I thank you for that. Or would you have preferred the ground?”

“I would have,” she said coldly.

“Very well,” said Oleg placidly, getting up himself. “Since you are determined to suffer, you may walk tied to my stirrup, so that Mamai doesn’t think I’ve gone soft. You are going to have a long day.”

OLEG LEFT THE TENT, which he called a ger. Vasya’s mind was racing. Escape? Forget they could see her and walk through the camp until she found her brother? But could she forget they could see him? And what if he was wounded? No, she decided reluctantly. It was better, wiser, to wait until midnight. She wasn’t getting two chances.

Oleg sent a man in to her, carrying a cup full of something foul-smelling. Mare’s milk, fermented. It was thick, clotted, sour. Her stomach roiled. When Oleg himself reappeared, he said, “Doesn’t smell like much, I know, but Tatars march for days on that alone—and the blood of their horses. Drink it, witch-girl.”

She drank, trying not to choke. When Oleg moved to tie her hands afresh, she said, “Oleg Ivanovich, is my brother all right?”

He drew the ropes tight around her wrists, looking at first as though he did not mean to answer. Then he said shortly, “He’s alive, although he might be wishing he weren’t. And he has not changed his story. I told Mamai that you knew nothing, that you were only an idiot girl. He believed me, although Chelubey did not. Be wary of him.”

At midnight, Vasya told herself, trying not to shake. We must only survive until midnight.

Oleg pulled her outside the tent, into the rising sun, and she quailed. In broad daylight, the encampment was bigger than a town, bigger than a city. Tents and horse-lines stretched as far as she could see, half-blocked by scrubby woods. There were hundreds of men. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Her mind would go no higher. There were more horses than men, carts on every side. How would Dmitrii muster an army to match this one? How could he possibly hope to defeat them?

Oleg’s horse was a stocky, big-headed bay mare. Her eye was kind and intelligent. Oleg slapped the mare’s neck with affection.

Hello, Vasya said to the bay, with her body, in the speech of horses.

The bay flicked a dubious ear. Hello, she said. You are not a horse.

No, she said, as Oleg fastened the rope about her wrists to his saddle and vaulted to the mare’s back. But I understand you. Can you help me?

The mare looked puzzled, but not unwilling. How? she asked, and jolted into a trot at the touch of Oleg’s calf. Vasya, trying to think of a way to explain, was hauled stumbling along with them, praying that her strength would hold.

SHE SOON REALIZED THAT Oleg was keeping her close in part to humiliate her, but also to keep her from the nastier elements of an army on the march. Perhaps he’d believed her more than he appeared, about having been sent from Dmitrii Ivanovich. Perhaps he was even not so loyal to the Tatar as he appeared. The first time someone threw horse-dung at her, Oleg turned with a deceptively soft word, and she was not troubled again.

But the day was hard, and the hours passed slowly. Dust got in her eyes, her mouth. It rained halfway through the morning, and the dust turned to mud, and she was relieved for a space until she began to shiver, her wet clothes chafing. Then the sun came out, and she was back to sweating.

The bay mare was persuaded to make Vasya’s way as easy as she could, by keeping straight so she didn’t pull Vasya off her feet. But the mare was required to keep up a steady trot, hour after hour. She tugged Vasya in her wake. The girl was panting, her limbs afire, the cut on her head throbbing. Oleg did not look back.

They did not stop until the sun was high, and then only briefly. As soon as they halted, Vasya crumpled against the bay’s comfortable shoulder, shuddering. She heard Oleg dismount. “More witchcraft?” he asked her mildly.

She hauled up her aching head and blinked at him resentfully.

“I raised this one from a foal,” he explained, slapping the mare’s neck. “She hasn’t bitten you yet, and now you’re leaning on her like she’s a plow-horse.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t like men,” Vasya said, wiping the sweat from her brow.

He snorted. “Perhaps. Here.” He handed her a skin of mead, and she gulped, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “We go until dark,” he said, putting a foot in the stirrup. “You are stronger than you look,” he added. “Fortunately for you.”

Vasya only prayed she’d make it to midnight.

Before Oleg could remount, his mare slanted an ear and Chelubey cantered up. Oleg turned, looking wary. “Not so proud now, are you, girl?” Chelubey said in Russian.

Vasya said, “I want to see my brother.”

“No, you don’t. He’s having a worse day than you,” said Chelubey. “He could make it easier for himself, but he just repeats the same lies, no matter what the flies do to his back.”

She swallowed a wave of nausea. “He is a man of the Church,” she snapped. “You have no right to hurt him!”

“If he had stayed in his monastery,” said Chelubey, “I wouldn’t. Men of the Church should confine themselves to praying.” He bent nearer. Heads were turning among Oleg’s men. “One of you is going to tell me what I want to know, or I will kill him,” he said. “Tonight.”

Chelubey had brought his horse right up alongside Oleg’s. Vasya did not move, but suddenly the bay mare lashed out with both hind feet, catching Chelubey’s horse in the flank. The horse squealed, shied, threw his rider and backed, eyes wild, two hoof-shaped gashes in his coat.

Oleg’s bay wheeled, rearing, and yanked Vasya to the ground. Vasya was glad of that, even as she tumbled painfully into the dust. No one would realize she’d done it on purpose. Oleg sprang forward, caught his horse’s bridle.

All his men were laughing.

“Witch!” snapped Chelubey, hauling himself out of the dust. To Vasya’s surprise he looked a little afraid, as well as enraged. “You—”

“You cannot blame a girl for my horse’s bad temper,” said Oleg mildly, from behind her. “You brought your mare too close.”

“I am going to take her with me now,” said Chelubey. “She is dangerous.”

“The mare or the girl?” Oleg asked innocently. The men laughed again. Vasya kept her eyes on Chelubey. The Russians were edging up on either side of her, closing ranks against the Tatar. Someone had caught Chelubey’s horse. He was staring at her with a kind of enraged fascination. But then, abruptly, he turned away, saying, “Bring the girl to me at nightfall.” With that he remounted and spurred off along the dusty column.

Vasya watched him go. Oleg was shaking his head. “I thought Dmitrii Ivanovich a man of sense, at least,” he said. “But to spend his cousins like water, and for what?” Seeing her face still white and afraid, he added, with rough comfort, “Here,” and gave her a hunk of flatbread. But she couldn’t have eaten to save her life; she thrust the food in her sleeve for later.

THE AFTERNOON DRAGGED ON, and the men of Ryazan began to experience something strange. Their horses were slowing down. It wasn’t lameness, and it wasn’t sickness. But though the men kicked and spurred, their horses would only break into a lumbering gallop, then halt a few paces later, ears flattened.

Oleg and his men found themselves falling behind the fast-moving Tatar column. By nightfall, they were out of sight of the main body. Only the dust, faint against the green-yellow sky, showed the location of the rest of the army.

Vasya felt battered in every limb. Her head was throbbing with the effort of negotiating silently with a whole column’s worth of horses. Fortunately, Oleg’s mare was a sensible creature, held in awe by the others. She was a great help in creating the delay Vasya needed. If Vasya was to be dragged back to Chelubey, she wanted it to be at or near midnight.

They came to a ford, stopped to let the horses drink. Vasya, with a gasp, knelt at the riverbank herself. Gulping water, she was quite unprepared when Oleg took her by the upper arms, pulled her upright, turned her around, hands still wet. “All right,” he said grimly. “Is it you?”

“Is what me?” Vasya asked.

He shook her once, slamming her teeth together on her tongue. She tasted blood. She was reminded that, whatever small kindnesses this prince chose to show her, he would betray Dmitrii Ivanovich to keep his own people safe; he would kill her without a qualm. “I’ve protected you; do I deserve deceit?” Oleg demanded. “Chelubey said you’d ensorcelled a horse in Moscow. I had my doubts, but—” A half-ironic sweep of his hand took in the vanished column. “Here we stand. Are you doing something to the horses?”

“I haven’t been out of your sight,” she said, and did not trouble to keep the exhaustion and defeat out of her voice. “How could I have done something to the horses?”

He considered her a few moments more, narrow-eyed, and then he said, “You are planning something. What is it?”

“Of course, I am planning,” she said tiredly. “I am trying to think of a way to save my brother’s life. I haven’t thought of anything clever yet.” She let her eyes rise to his. “Do you know a way, Oleg Ivanovich? I will do anything to save him.”

He drew in a half-breath, looking uneasily into her eyes. “Anything?”

She made no reply, but she met his eyes.

He pressed his lips together; his glance went from her eyes to her mouth. Suddenly he let her go, turned away. “I will see what can be done,” he said, voice clipped.

He was an honorable man, she thought, and not a fool; he might threaten but he’d not lie with Dmitrii’s cousin. But that he was angry meant he was tempted. And he was angry; she could see the cords in his neck. But he didn’t shake her again, and he had stopped thinking about the horses, which was what she wanted.

As for the rest—well, she meant to be gone, and her brother with her, before the question was raised again.

Oleg remounted, spurred his mare, yanked her on. There was no more stopping.

IT WAS FULL NIGHT, well after moonrise, by the time Oleg’s Russians found their place in the host. Their horses were fresh, having enjoyed Vasya’s game greatly, but the men were sweating, sullen, sore.

Comments that sounded like good-natured abuse were hurled from all sides as the Russians straggled into camp in the moonlight. The exhausted men snapped at their restless horses. Oleg had not taken his eyes off her, Vasya was sure, for the last hour of marching. When they finally halted, he swung from the saddle and contemplated her grimly. “I must take you to Chelubey.”

A little cold tendril of fear wormed its way through her belly. But she managed to say, “Where? Where is my brother?”

“In Mamai’s ger.” He must have seen the involuntary fear in her eyes, for he added roughly, “I won’t leave you there, girl. Work on the most ignorant face you can manage. I must see the men settled first.”

She was left sitting on a log, with a guard nearby. Vasya looked up at the moon, tried to feel the hour in her bones. It was late, certainly. Her clothes, sweat-soaked in the day’s heats, chilled her now. She drew in a deep breath. Close enough to midnight? It would have to be.

Her head was clear now, though she was very tired. The nausea was gone, the pain in her head. She tried to push aside her fear for her brother, and concentrate. Small things. Little magic that was not beyond her strength and would not send her mad. Sitting on the day-warm earth, she forgot that her bonds were tight.

And she felt the rope give. Just a little. She forced herself to relax. The rope gave a little more, subtly. Now she could move her chafed wrists, turn them.

She looked round, caught the amiable eye of Oleg’s bay. The mare, obligingly, reared, squealing. All the Russian horses did. Simultaneously, they went into a very ecstasy of fear, bucking, heaving wild-eyed on their pickets, thrashing against their hobbles. All around, Vasya heard men cursing. They streamed over to the horse-lines, even Vasya’s guard. No one was looking at her. A twist, and she had yanked her wrists free. The chaos in the camp was spreading, as though the horses’ panic was infecting their fellows.

She didn’t know where Mamai’s tent lay. She ducked into the confusion of milling men and horses, put a hand on the good bay’s neck. The mare was still saddled; there was even a long knife attached to the saddlebag. “Will you carry me?” she whispered.

The bay tossed her head good-naturedly, and Vasya vaulted to her back. Suddenly she could see over the confusion. She nudged the mare forward, glancing back over her shoulder.

She could have sworn she saw Oleg of Ryazan, watching her go and saying not a word.

29. Between Winter and Spring

THERE IS A CLEARING ON the border between winter and spring. Once Vasya would have said that the cusp of spring was a moment. But now she knew that it was also a place, at the edge of the lands of winter.

At the center of the clearing stood an oak-tree. Its trunk was vast as a peasant’s hut, its branches spread like the roof-beams of a house, like the bars of a prison.

At the foot of the tree, leaning on the trunk, knees drawn up to his chest, sat Medved. It was still midnight. The clearing was dark; the moon had sunk below the horizon. There was only Pozhar’s light, echoed by the gleam of gold that bound the Bear’s wrists and throat. Utter silence in the forest all around, but Vasya had the distinct impression of unseen eyes, watching.

Medved didn’t move when he saw them, except his mouth quirked in an expression very far from a smile. “Come to gloat?” he asked.

Vasya slid off the mare’s back. The demon’s nostrils flared, taking in her disheveled appearance, the cut on her temple, feet caked with mud. Pozhar backed uneasily, ears locked on the Bear, remembering perhaps the teeth of his upyry in her flank.

Vasya stepped forward.

His unscarred brow lifted. “Or are you come to seduce me?” he asked. “My brother not enough for you?”

She said nothing. He couldn’t draw back, pressed against the tree, but the single eye opened wider. He was tense, bound tight by the gold. “No?” he said, still mocking. “Then why?”

“Did you mourn the priest?” she asked.

The Bear tilted his head and surprised her by saying simply, “Yes.”

“Why?”

“He was mine. He was beautiful. He could create and destroy with a word. He put his soul in his singing, in his writing of icons. He is gone. Of course, I mourn.”

“You shattered him,” she said.

“Perhaps. Though I did not make the cracks.”

Perhaps it was a fitting epitaph for Father Konstantin, to be regretted by a chaos-spirit. The Bear was leaning his head against the bole of the tree, as though untroubled, but the single eye was fixed on her. “Devushka, you are not here to lament Konstantin Nikonovich. Then why?”

“My brother is a prisoner of the Tatar general Mamai. And my brother-in-law with him,” she said.

The Bear snorted. “Kind of you to tell me. I hope they both die screaming.”

She said, “I cannot free them alone. I tried, and I failed.”

The eye took in her disheveled appearance again. “Did you?” His smile was almost whimsical. “What does that have to do with me?”

Vasya’s hands were shaking. “I mean to save them,” she said. “And after must save Rus’ from invasion. I cannot do it alone. I joined the war between you and your twin, when I helped Morozko bind you. But now I want you to join my war. Medved, will you help me?”

She had shocked him. The gray eye widened. But his voice was still light. “Help you?”

“I will make you a bargain.”

“What makes you think I’ll keep it?”

“Because,” she said, “I don’t think you want to spend eternity under this tree.”

“Very well.” He leaned forward, as far as the gold would allow. The words were scarcely more than a breath against her ear. “What bargain, devushka?”

“I will undo this golden thing,” she said. She traced the line of the binding, throat to wrist to hand. The golden bridle wanted to hold on; it was a tool made to bend one creature to another’s will. It resisted her, but when she slipped a finger beneath and pulled it just a little away from his skin, it gave.

Medved shuddered.

She did not want to see hope in his eyes. She wanted him to be a monster.

But monsters were for children. He was powerful, in his own fashion, and for her brother’s sake, she needed him.

Thinking of that, she opened the skin of her thumb on her dagger. His hand reached out involuntarily, drawn to the virtue in her blood. She drew away before he could touch her.

“If I release you, then you will serve me as Midnight serves my great-grandmother,” said Vasya grimly. “You will fight my battles and connive at my victories; if I summon, you will answer. You will swear never to lie to me, but give true counsel. You will not betray me, but always keep faith. You will also swear never again to turn your plagues onto Rus’: no terror or fire or dead alive. Under those conditions, and those alone, will I free you.”

He laughed. “The effrontery,” he said. “Just because my brother abased himself for your ugly face? Tell me why I should be your dog?”

Vasya smiled. “Because the world is wide and very beautiful, and you are tired of this clearing. I saw how you looked at the stars the night by the lake. Because, as you have noticed, I am like a chaos-spirit myself, and where I go disorder goes too. You enjoy that sort of thing. Because the fight between you and your brother is over, for you are both joining my war. And—perhaps you will like serving me. It would be a battle of wits at least.”

He snorted, “Your wits, witch-girl?”

“They are improving,” said Vasya, and touched his face with the hand she’d cut on her knife-blade.

He jerked back, even as his flesh grew more solid beneath her fingers. His hands flexed under the golden binding.

He stared at her, breathing shallowly. “Oh, now I know why my brother wanted you,” he whispered. “Sea-maiden, witch’s daughter. But one day you will go mad with magic. Just like every witch, every sorcerer that ever lived. And then you will be mine. Perhaps I’ll just…wait.”

“One day,” said Vasya mildly, dropping her hand, “I will die. I will go into the darkness, into the wood between worlds where your brother guides the dead. But I will still be myself. If I am mad, I will not be yours. And dead I will not be his.”

He breathed out half a laugh, but the gray eye was sharp. “Perhaps,” he said. “Still, exchange prison for slavery? Wear the golden rope here, trapped by the priest’s blood? Or wear it elsewhere, a slave to your will? You haven’t offered me nearly enough to get me to help you.”

Pozhar squealed suddenly. Vasya did not look round, but somehow the sound gave her courage. She knew she’d never keep the mare’s loyalty if she took a slave—any slave—with the help of that golden thing.

She took a deep breath. “No, you will not wear the rope. I am not Kaschei the Deathless. I am going to take your oath. Will it bind you, Medved?”

He stared.

She went on, “I imagine it might, since your own twin took your word. Swear to me, and I will free you. Or would you prefer sitting here to fighting a war?”

Avid hunger in his face, there and gone. “A war,” he breathed.

She fought nerves, made herself speak calmly. “Between Mamai and Dmitrii,” she said. “You should know. You were the one that ensured the silver would be lost.”

He shrugged. “I only cast bread on the water, devushka. And see what comes up to eat it.”

“Well, war is kindled; Dmitrii had no choice. And you, lover of battles, can help us. Will you swear to me, and come into the night?” She rose and stepped back. “Or perhaps you prefer to stay; perhaps it is beneath your dignity to be a girl’s servant.”

He laughed and laughed, and then he said, “In a thousand lives of men, I have never been anyone’s servant.” He gave her another long look. “And it will enrage my brother.” She bit her lip. “You have my oath—Vasilisa Petrovna.” He put his bound wrist to his mouth and bit his hand suddenly, just where finger met thumb. Blood, clear and sulfur-smelling, welled out. He put out a thick-fingered hand.

“What does your blood do to someone who is not dead?” she asked.

“Karachun told you, did he?” he said. “It gives you life, wild girl. Haven’t I sworn not to harm you?”

She hesitated, and then clasped his hand, her blood sluggish on his skin, his blood stinging where it touched. She felt a jolt of unpleasant energy, burning away her weariness.

Pulling her hand away, she said, “If you are forsworn, then back to this tree you will go, tied hand and foot and throat with this golden thing. And I will put out your other eye and you may live in darkness.”

“You were such a sweet child, when I first met you by this very tree,” remarked the Bear. “What happened?” His voice was mocking, but she could feel the tension in him, when she began to undo the golden clasps.

“What happened? Love, betrayal, and time,” said Vasya. “What happens to anyone who grows to understand you, Medved? Living happens.” Her hands slid along the oily gold, working at the buckles. She wondered briefly how Kaschei had made it. Somewhere, perhaps, there was an answer, somewhere there were secrets of magic beyond the setting of fires, the seeing of chyerti.

One day, perhaps, she would learn them, in far countries, beneath wilder skies.

Then the gold slithered away, all in a rush. The Bear was very still, flexing his unbound hands with a disbelief he couldn’t quite conceal. She got to her feet. The gold was in two pieces: what had been the reins and the headstall of the bridle. She wrapped them around her wrists: a terrible prince’s ransom, shining.

The Bear rose, and stood beside her. His back was straight; his eye glittered. “Come then, mistress,” he said, half-mocking. “Where shall we go?”

“To my brother,” said Vasya grimly. “While it is still midnight, and he is still alive. But first—”

She turned, seeking, in the darkness. “Polunochnitsa,” she said.

She had no doubts of her guess, and indeed, the midnight-demon stepped at once into the clearing. Voron’s great hooves crunched the bracken at her back.

“You betrayed me,” said Vasya.

“But you understood at last,” said Polunochnitsa. “It was never your task to pick out the good from the wicked. Your task was to unite us. We are one people.” The rage was gone from her face.

Vasya stalked forward. “You could have told me. They tormented my brother.”

“It is not something you can be told,” said Polunochnitsa. “It is something you must come to understand.”

Her great-grandmother had said the same. Vasya could feel the Bear watching. He breathed out a laugh as she, wordless, unspooled the golden rope, snapped it out, caught Polunochnitsa around the throat. The midnight-demon tried to wrench back, but couldn’t, caught by the power in the gold. She made a single, shocked sound and stood still, wide-eyed.

Vasya said, “I do not like being betrayed, Polunochnitsa. You took no pity on me after the fire; you had no pity on my brother. Perhaps I should leave you tied to a tree.”

The black stallion reared, squealing. Vasya didn’t move, though the great hooves were a handsbreadth from her face. “I will take her with me, Voron, if you kill me.”

The horse subsided, and Vasya had to harden her heart. Midnight was looking at her with genuine fear. “Medved owes me allegiance now, and so do you, Polunochnitsa. You will not betray me again.”

The midnight-demon was staring at her with horror and unwilling fascination. “You are Baba Yaga’s heir in truth now,” she said. “When you have finished with the dealings of men, go back to the lake. At midnight, the witch will be waiting.”

“I am not finished yet,” Vasya said grimly. “I am going to save my brother. You are going to swear an oath to me as well, Lady Midnight, and you are going to help me.”

“I am sworn to your great-grandmother.”

“And, as you said, I am her heir.”

Their eyes locked, a silent battle of wills. Midnight was the first to lower hers. “I swear then,” she said.

“What do you swear?”

“To serve you and to heed you, and never to betray you again.”

Vasya, with a snap, freed Polunochnitsa of the golden rope. “I swear to sustain you as I can,” she said. “With blood and with memory. We can no longer afford to fight amongst ourselves.”

The Bear said lightly, from behind, “I think I am going to enjoy this.”

30. The Enemy of My Enemy

SASHA WAS ONLY VAGUELY AWARE of what happened, after he threw Chelubey from the saddle. He hadn’t been thinking clearly when he did it. Merely that there was a sword, and his sister’s vulnerable throat, and he hated the Tatar as he’d never hated anyone in his life. Hated his impersonal cruelties, his clever mind, his soft questions.

So, when the Tatar drew up alongside them, Sasha saw an opening and didn’t hesitate. But he was wounded, and Chelubey strong. A blow to his jaw shot sparks across his sight, and then Chelubey shouted over Sasha’s head, urging other men on. Sasha dragged himself to his knees, saw his sister, still mounted, wheeling her horse to come back for him.

Vasya, he tried to shout. Run.

Then the world went dark. When he came to, he was still lying on the ground. Chelubey stood over him. “She’s gone,” Sasha heard a voice say. “Disappeared.” He let out a breath of relief, just as Chelubey drew back and kicked him in the ribs. The bone cracked; Sasha doubled up, lacking the breath to scream.

“I think,” said Chelubey, “that after the night’s excitement, the general will have no further objections to you dying while I torture you. Get him on his feet.”

But the men weren’t looking down at Sasha anymore. They were backing up, with expressions of horror.

THE ROAD BACK THROUGH Midnight was short. Vasya’s blood cried out for her brother; and Pozhar had no objection to galloping through the forest at reckless speed. Voron raced alongside them. The black stallion was far swifter than any mortal horse, but still he labored to match the golden mare’s pace.

Vasya mourned in silence even as she savored the strength of the mare beneath her. The firebird was not, and never would be, her other self, and Pozhar’s grace reminded Vasya of her loss all over again.

The Bear paced the horses in silence. He had let go the shape of a man; he ran as a great shadow-beast, nourished by her blood. As they went, he sniffed at the sky, barely containing a bared-teeth eagerness.

“Hoping for killing?” said Vasya.

“No,” said the Bear. “I care naught for the dead. Mine are the suffering living.”

“Our task is to save my brother,” Vasya said sharply. “Not to make people suffer. Are you so quickly forsworn, Medved?”

The two pieces of golden rope shimmered eerily on her wrists. He shot them a dark look and said, a growl just entering his voice, “I have promised.”

“Ahead,” said Midnight. Vasya squinted into the darkness. Fires broke up the night in front of them; the wind brought them the smell of men and horses.

Vasya sat back and Pozhar slowed, grudgingly. Her nostrils flared, disliking the smell of men. “I left my brother on the north side of the camp, not far from a stream,” said Vasya to Polunochnitsa. “Is he still there?”

In answer, Midnight slid down from her horse, put a light hand on the stallion’s neck, whispered. Voron reared up against the sky, mane flying lightly as feathers, and then a raven flew into the night.

“Solovey never did that,” Vasya said, watching the black horse change and fly.

“Take his other form? He was too young,” said Midnight. “A colt still. The young ones only change with difficulty. He’d have learned to control his own nature if—”

“He’d had time,” Vasya finished flatly. The Bear glanced at her, half-smiling, as though he could taste the hurt.

“We must follow Voron,” said Midnight.

“Get up behind me then,” said Vasya. “Unless—Pozhar, do you mind?”

The mare looked as though she were considering saying no, just to remind them that she could. Very well, she said irritably, switching her tail.

Vasya put an arm down; the chyert seemed to weigh nothing at all. Riding double on the mare, they surged forward, the Bear at Pozhar’s flank. Ahead, the trees thinned, and a single raven croaked from the darkness.

THE TATARS WERE STILL where she’d left them. Some were still mounted; others stood in a ragged circle. Two reached down, heaving, and Vasya glimpsed the dim shape of her brother being dragged to his feet. He was limp, his head hung down.

“Can you frighten them off?” said Vasya to the Bear, hearing her voice shake, quite beyond her control.

“Perhaps, mistress,” said Medved, and grinned his vast dog-grin at her. “Do keep panicking. It helps me.”

She just stared at him, stone-faced, and he relented. “Do something else useful then. See that tree there? Set it afire.”

A flicker of remembered fire, and the tree burst into flames. It was disturbing, how easy it had become. Being near the Bear fanned the chaos in her own heart. His eye found hers. “It would do you good to go mad,” he murmured. “It would make it easier. You could do any magic you pleased—if you were mad. Storms and lightning and noonday darkness.”

“Be silent!” she said. The fire on the tree grew bigger, sending out a sweep of golden light. Reality wavered; she dug her nails into her palms, and whispered her own name, to make it stop. She forced her voice to calm. “Are you going to frighten them off or not?”

Still smiling, the Bear turned wordless toward the huddle of men and began to creep closer. Their horses backed up, nostrils flared. Wide-eyed, the men faced the night, swords in their hands.

Within the firelight, a shadow grew. A strange, crawling, mutable shadow, slinking toward men and horses. The shadow of an unseen beast.

The Bear’s soft voice seemed to come from the shadow itself. “Interfere with my servant?” he whispered. “Lay hands on what is mine? You’ll die for it. You’ll die screaming.”

His voice got into the men’s ears, got into their minds. His shadow crawled nearer, sending twisted shapes dancing across the fire-beaten ground. The men were trembling. A soft, unearthly snarl filled the night. The shadows seemed to spring. At the same moment, a flicker of memory from Vasya made the flames leap in the burning tree.

The men’s nerve broke. They fled, mounted or afoot, until there was only one alone, standing over her brother’s prone form, shouting at the running men. They had let Sasha fall as they escaped.

The single man was Chelubey. Vasya nudged Pozhar then and rode into the light.

Chelubey blanched. His sword-blade dipped. “I warned them,” he said. “Oleg and Mamai—those fools. I warned them.”

Vasya gave him a dazzling smile, without warmth. “You shouldn’t have told them I was a girl. Then they might have believed that I was dangerous.”

Pozhar’s eyes were embers, her mane, smoke and sparks. A touch to her flank drove the mare into a rear. She lashed out with her forefeet, and even Chelubey’s nerve broke then. He fled, leaped to his own horse’s back, shot away. Pozhar, half-maddened, sprang in pursuit. Vasya curbed her after a few bolting strides. Her blood was up; she had to fight her own urge, as well as the mare’s, to ride Chelubey down. It was as though the Bear’s presence goaded them both to rashness.

Well, he could goad all he liked; Vasya would make decisions for herself. “My brother,” she said, seizing control of herself, and Pozhar was persuaded, with difficulty, to turn.

The Bear looked mildly disappointed. Ignoring him, Vasya dropped to the ground at her brother’s side. Sasha was curled up, arms wrapped around his body. Blood showed on his mouth, on his back, black in the firelight. But he was alive. “Sasha,” she said, cradling his head. “Bratishka.”

Slowly, he looked up. “I told you to run,” he croaked.

“I came back.”

“That was disappointingly easy,” said the Bear from behind her. “What now?”

Sasha tried to sit up, made a small sound of pain. “No,” Vasya said. “No, don’t be afraid. He helped me.” She was feeling her brother over gently. The blood on his hand and back had gone cold and sticky, and his breath was short with pain, but she could find no fresh wounds. “Sasha,” she said. “I must go into the camp, and find Vladimir Andreevich. Can you stand? You can’t stay here.”

“I think I can stand,” he said. He tried, struggling. Once he put his weight on his injured hand and made a sound not far from a scream. But he got himself upright, leaning heavily on her. She staggered under his weight; her brother was barely conscious.

Perhaps that was a blessing, considering how he’d feel about her allies.

“Will you take him up on Voron?” Vasya asked Polunochnitsa. “And hide him from the Tatars?”

“You want me to nursemaid a monk?” Polunochnitsa asked, disbelieving. Then her expression turned curious. It occurred to Vasya that a chyert might be persuaded to try any unusual thing just to relieve the boredom of eternity.

“Swear you won’t hurt him, or allow him to be hurt, or frighten him,” Vasya said. “Meet us here. We are going to get my cousin.”

At that Sasha croaked, “Am I a nursing babe, Vasya, that she must swear all those oaths? Who is this?”

“Travel by midnight would awaken the sight in even a monk,” put in the Bear. “That is interesting.”

Reluctantly Vasya answered Sasha, “Lady Midnight.”

“The one who hates you?”

“We came to an arrangement.”

Midnight gave Sasha an appraising look. “I swear it, Vasilisa Petrovna. Come, monk, and get on my horse.”

Vasya wasn’t sure of the wisdom of trusting Midnight with her brother, but she had little choice.

“Come on,” she said to the Bear. “We have to free the Prince of Serpukhov, and then we must persuade Oleg of Ryazan that he is fighting for the wrong side.”

Following her, the Bear said reflectively, “I might even enjoy that. Although it rather depends on your method of persuasion.”

VASYA’S FIRES HAD BURNED down to scarlet embers, but they glowed on every hand, illuminating the Tatar encampment with a hellish light. Weary men were catching the foam-streaked horses and whispering among themselves; the air of unease was palpable. The Bear surveyed the remains of turmoil with a critical eye. “Admirable,” he said. “I’ll make a creature of chaos of you yet.”

She feared she was already halfway there, but she was not saying that to him.

The Bear said, “What do you mean to do?”

Vasya told him her plan.

He laughed. “A few shambling corpses would be better. Nothing better for getting people to do what you want.”

“We are not disturbing any more dead souls!” snapped Vasya.

“You may find it tempting, before the end.”

“Not tonight,” said Vasya. “Can you set fires, yourself?”

“Yes, and put them out too. Fear and fire are my tools, sweet maiden.”

“Can you smell my cousin?”

“Russian blood?” he asked. “Do you think me a witch in a fairy tale?”

“Yes or no.”

He lifted his head and snuffed the night. “Yes,” he said, growling a little. “Yes, I suppose I can.”

Vasya turned to have a quick word with Pozhar. Then she followed the Bear into the Tatar camp on foot. As she did, she took a deep breath and forgot that she was anything but a shadow, walking beside another shadow. One with teeth.

Invisibly, they slipped into the chaos of the camp, and the Bear, in his element, seemed to grow. He moved unerringly through the noise, the little knots of still-frightened horses, and where he passed, the horses shied and fires flared. Men turned clammy faces toward the darkness. He grinned at them, blew sparks into their clothes.

“Enough,” said Vasya. “Find my cousin. Or I will bind you with more than just promises.”

“There is more than one Russian here,” said the Bear irritably. “I can’t—” He caught her eye and finished almost meekly, except for a hint of sudden laughter in his eyes. “But that one smells like the far north.”

She followed him, quicker now. Finally, he halted near the center of the camp. Instinctively she wanted to flatten herself, hiding in the shadow of a round tent, but that would mean she believed the soldiers could see her.

They couldn’t. She held that thought and stayed where she was.

A bound man was kneeling, silhouetted, beside a well-tended fire. All around, soldiers were soothing their restive horses.

Three men stood near the fire, arguing. With the light behind them, it took her a moment to recognize Mamai and Chelubey and Oleg. She wished she could understand what they were saying.

“They are deciding whether or not to kill him,” said the beast beside her. “It seems your escape has made them wary.”

“You understand Tatar?”

“I understand the speech of men,” said the Bear, just as a dazzle of fresh light poured over the camp, panicking the horses all over again. Vasya didn’t look up. She knew what she would see: Pozhar soaring overhead, streaming smoke, her fiery wings making arcs of scarlet and blue, gold and white.

I can’t make the earth catch fire like I did in the city, Pozhar had said, when Vasya asked. That was—I was so angry, I was maddened with anger. I can’t do it again.

“You don’t have to,” Vasya returned. “Just dazzle them. It will send a message to my countrymen.” She patted the horse comfortingly, and Pozhar bit her on the shoulder.

Now all around the camp, men looked to the sky. A babble of renewed talk broke out. She heard the snap of bowstrings, saw a few arrows arc up into the night, but Pozhar was keeping out of range. A wondering cry, quickly silenced, rose from one of the Russians: “Zhar Ptitsa!”

“Can you make it so they can see you?” Vasya asked the Bear, not taking her eyes off the general.

“With your blood,” he said.

She gave him her grazed hand; he clung greedily, then she yanked her fingers back again.

“At the right moment then,” she said.

Holding fast to the knowledge that they could not see her, she crept into the light. The three men were still arguing, shouting at each other now, while the bird, shining, impossible, soared overhead.

Vasya walked up behind them, unspooled her golden rope, and wrapped it around Mamai’s throat.

He managed a choked gasp, and then he froze, caught by Kaschei’s magic and her own will.

Everyone in sight froze too. They could see her now. “Good evening,” said Vasya. It was hard to get the breath to speak steadily. The eyes of two dozen expert bowmen were on her; many of them already had arrows up.

“You can’t kill me before I kill him,” she said to them. “Even if you fill me with arrows.” In one hand, she had the golden rope, but in the other was her knife, pressed to Mamai’s throat. She thought she heard Oleg’s voice, interpreting, but she didn’t look around to see.

Chelubey had drawn his sword; he took one furious step toward her, then stopped at Mamai’s wordless, pained sound.

“I am here for the Prince of Serpukhov,” said Vasya.

Mamai made another inarticulate croak, and then said something that sounded like an order. “Silence!” she snapped, and he stood rigid when she pressed the dagger a little more into his neck.

Oleg was gaping at her like a landed fish. Above them the firebird cried again, wheeling, bright against the clouds. The Tatars’ horses plunged. Out of the corner of her eye, Vasya glimpsed men, as though despite themselves, lifting their faces to the light.

Chelubey was the first to recover his wits. “You won’t leave here alive, girl.”

“If I don’t,” said Vasya, “and Vladimir Andreevich doesn’t, then your leader doesn’t either. Will you risk it?”

“Loose your arrows!” snapped Chelubey as Vasya gashed the general’s throat just hard enough to make him cry out. Copper-smelling blood ran over her hands. The bowmen hesitated.

Medved took advantage of the moment to come strolling out of the night: a vast shadow-bear. A hell-light of amusement shone in his good eye.

A single bowstring twanged, the shot wild. Then a terrified stillness fell.

Vasya spoke into the silence. “Free the Prince of Serpukhov, or I will set the whole camp afire and lame every horse. And he will eat what’s left.” She jerked her chin at the Bear. The beast obligingly bared his teeth.

Mamai croaked something. His men hurried. Next moment, the man from the river, her sister’s husband, was coming warily toward her.

He seemed unhurt. His eyes widened when he recognized the boy by the water. Vasya said, “Vladimir Andreevich.” He looked as though he thought the rescue might be worse than the captivity. She tried to reassure him. “Dmitrii Ivanovich sent me,” she said. “Are you all right? Can you ride?”

He dipped his chin in a wary nod, crossed himself. No one moved.

“Come with me,” said Vasya to her cousin. He did, still looking uncertain. She began to back up, still holding on to Mamai by the golden rope.

Oleg had not spoken, but he was watching her very intently. She took a deep breath.

“Now,” she said to the Bear.

Every fire in the encampment went out at once, every lamp and torch. The firebird was the only light, soaring overhead. Then Pozhar swooped low and the horses all plunged at their pickets again, neighing shrilly.

Over the din, in the darkness, Vasya whispered in the general’s ear, “Continue on this course, and you will die. Rus’ will have no conquerors.” She thrust him into the arms of his men, caught her cousin’s hand and pulled him into the shadows, just as three bows twanged. But she had already vanished into the night, and with her the Bear and Vladimir Andreevich.

The Bear was laughing as they ran. “They were so frightened, of a little skinny witch-girl. It was delicious. Oh, we will teach this whole land to fear, before the end.” He turned his good eye on her and added censoriously, “You should have cut the leader’s throat properly. He will live, none the worse.”

“They gave me my cousin. In honor, I could not—”

The Bear whooped unpleasantly. “Hear the girl! The Grand Prince of Moscow gives her a task and she decides on the spot that she’s a boyar, stuffed to the brim with the courtesies of war. How long will it take you to learn better, I wonder?”

Vasya said nothing. Instead she turned aside at a horse-line just at the edge of camp, cut a picket, said, “Here, Vladimir Andreevich. Mount up.”

Vladimir didn’t move. His eyes were on the Bear. “What black devilry is this?”

Happily, the Bear said, “The worst kind.”

Vladimir made the sign of the cross with a hand that shook. Someone shouted in Tatar. Vasya whipped round and saw that Medved, enjoying their terror, had made himself visible against the sky. Vladimir Andreevich was on the edge of fleeing back to his enemies.

Furious, Vasya uncoiled a golden rope, and said, “Are we allies or no, Medved? I am getting tired of you.”

“Oh, I do not like that thing,” said the Bear. But his mouth closed; he seemed to shrink. Men were coming nearer.

“Get on the horse,” Vasya said to Vladimir.

There was no saddle or bridle, but the Prince of Serpukhov heaved himself to the gelding’s back, just as Vasya vaulted onto a piebald mare.

“Who are you?” whispered Vladimir, his voice cold with fright.

“I am Olga’s younger sister,” said Vasya. “Go!” She slapped the haunch of Vladimir’s mount, and then they were away, over the grass, dodging between sparse trees, seeking the dark, and leaving the Tatars at last behind them.

The Bear laughed at her as they galloped away. “Now, don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that,” he said.

Answering laughter rose in her: the giddy joy of striking fear in her enemies’ hearts. She tamped it down, but not before her eyes met the gaze of the king of chaos, and she saw her own reckless delight reflected there.

SASHA AND MIDNIGHT WERE just where Vasya had left them, double-mounted on Voron. Pozhar met them there too, in the form of a horse. Her every footfall made sparks; her eye was molten.

Vasya felt a surge of relief at the sight of them.

“Brother Aleksandr,” said Vladimir, still sputtering. “Can it be—”

“Vladimir Andreevich,” said Sasha. “Vasya.” And to her surprise, Sasha slid down Voron’s back just as she got off her Tatar mare. They embraced.

“Sasha,” she said. “How—” His back had been bound, and his hand. He moved stiffly, but not in a haze of pain.

He glanced back at Polunochnitsa. “We rode into the dark,” he said, frowning as though it were hard to remember. “I was barely conscious. There was the sound of water on rock. A house that smelled of honey and garlic. And an old woman there who bound my back. She said—she said she preferred daughters, but that I would do. Would I like to stay? I don’t know what I answered. I slept. I don’t know how long. But every time I woke, it was still midnight. Then Polunochnitsa came and said I had slept long enough, and she brought me back. I almost—it seems like the old woman called after us, sadly, but I might have dreamed it.”

Vasya raised an eyebrow at Polunochnitsa. “You took him to the lake? How long was he there?”

“Long enough,” said Midnight, unrepentant.

“You didn’t think it would send him mad?” Vasya asked, with an edge.

“No,” said Polunochnitsa. “He was asleep, mostly. And also, he is very like you.” She gave Sasha a proprietary look. “Besides he couldn’t sit upright and reeked of blood, and that irritated me. It was easier to let the witch fix him. She regrets Tamara, you know, as much as she is angry.”

Vasya said, “It was kind then, my friend,” to the midnight-demon. Polunochnitsa looked simultaneously suspicious and pleased.

“You have met our great-grandmother,” Vasya added to her brother. “She is a madwoman who lives in Midnight. She is cruel and lonely, and sometimes kind.”

“The old woman?” said Sasha. “I—no. Surely not. Our great-grandmother must be dead.”

“She is,” said Vasya. “But that doesn’t matter, in Midnight.”

Sasha looked thoughtful. “I would go back. When this is over. Cruel or no, she seemed to know a great many things.”

“Perhaps we can go together,” said Vasya.

“Perhaps,” said Sasha. They grinned at each other, like children contemplating adventures, instead of a witch and a monk on the cusp of battle.

Vladimir Andreevich was shooting them both black looks. “Brother Aleksandr,” he broke in stiffly, making the sign of the cross. “This is a strange meeting.”

“God be with you,” said Sasha.

“And what in God’s name—” began the Prince of Serpukhov, before Vasya interjected hastily.

“Sasha will explain,” she said, “while I perform one last errand. If we are fortunate, we will have company on the way north.”

“Better hurry,” said the Bear. He was looking critically over the Tatar camp where they had begun relighting their fires. Pozhar’s ears twitched at the faint noise of their furious shouting. “They’re like a stirred-up beehive.”

“You’re coming with me,” she told him. “I don’t trust you out of my sight.”

“Quite right,” said the Bear and looked up at the sky with a sigh of pleasure.

WHEN OLEG OF RYAZAN came back to his tent at last, he looked like a man who’d lived eternities in one night. He pushed the flap aside, walked in and stood silent a moment. Vasya let out a soft breath, and his clay lamp flared to life.

Oleg looked utterly unsurprised. “If the general finds you, he will kill you slowly.”

She stepped into the lamplight. “He is not going to find me. I came back for you.”

“Did you?”

“You have seen the firebird in the sky,” she said. “You have seen flames in the night and horses running mad. You have seen the Bear in the shadows. You have seen our strength. Your men are already whispering of the strange power of the Grand Prince of Moscow, that has reached even into the camp of the Tatar.”

“Strange power? Perhaps Dmitrii Ivanovich has no care for his immortal soul, but am I to damn my soul, allying myself with devils?”

“You are a practical man,” Vasya said gently. She stepped closer. He knotted his hands together. “You did not choose to side with the Tatar for loyalty, but for survival’s sake. Now you see that the opposite may be true. That we can win. Under the Khan you will never be more than a vassal, Oleg Ivanovich. If we win, then you will be a prince in your own right.”

It was an effort to keep her voice even. She had begun to shake with spending too long in Midnight. The Bear’s presence made that worse too. The chyert was a knot of deeper darkness, listening from the shadows.

“Witch, you have your brother and your cousin,” said Oleg. “Are you not content?”

“No,” said Vasya. “Summon your boyars and come with us.”

Oleg’s eyes were darting around the tent as though he could—not see, but sense—the Bear’s presence. The clay lamp guttered; the darkness around it deepened.

Vasya aimed a glare at Medved, and the dark retreated a little.

“Come with us and have victory,” Vasya said.

“Maybe a victory,” murmured the Bear from behind her. “Who knows?”

Oleg was shrinking nearer the lamplight, without quite knowing what frightened him.

“Tomorrow,” said Vasya. “Have your men fall behind the main body again. We’ll be waiting.”

After a long silence, Oleg said firmly, “My men will stay with Mamai.”

She heard the echo of her failure in the words, just as the Bear let out a sigh of pleased understanding.

Then Oleg finished, and Vasya understood. “If I am to betray the general, better to wait until the right moment.”

Their eyes met.

“I love a clever traitor,” said the Bear.

Oleg said, “My boyars want to fight on the Russian side. I thought it my task to constrain their foolishness. But—”

Vasya nodded. Had she convinced him to risk his place and his life with naught but tricks and chyerti—and her own dogged faith? She looked him in the face, and felt the burden of his belief. “Dmitrii Ivanovich will be at Kolomna in a fortnight,” she said. “Will you come to him then, and lay your plans?”

Oleg said, “I will send a man. But I cannot go myself. Mamai would suspect.”

Vasya said, “You can go yourself. I will take you there and back in the course of a single night.”

Oleg stared. Then grim humor touched his face. “On your mortar? Very well, witch. But know that even combining our strength, Dmitrii and I might as well be two beetles plotting to break a boulder.”

“Where is your faith?” said Vasya, and smiled suddenly. “Look for me at midnight, in two weeks.”

31. All the Russias

THE MEN OF RUS’ MUSTERED at Kolomna over the course of four gray, chilly days. One by one the princes came: Rostov and Starodub, Polotsk, Murom, Tver, Moscow, and the rest, as a cold rain whispered over the muddy fields.

Dmitrii Ivanovich set his tent in the middle of the gathering host, and the first night they were all assembled, he summoned his princes to him to take counsel.

They were grim, heavy with fatigue from mustering and marching in haste. It was well after moonset when the last of them crowded into Dmitrii’s round felt tent, shooting each other wary looks. Midnight was not far off. Outside lay the Russian horse-lines, their wagons and their fires, stretching in every direction.

All that day, the Grand Prince had been getting reports. “The Tatars are assembling here,” he said. He had a map; he pointed to a marshy place, on the curve of the Don river, at the mouth of a smaller tributary. Snipes’ Field it was called, for the birds in the long grass. “They are waiting for reinforcements; units from Litva, mercenaries from Caffa. We must strike before their reinforcements can come up. Three days’ march and battle at dawn on the fourth day, if all goes well.”

“By how much do they outnumber us now?” demanded Mikhail of Tver.

Dmitrii did not answer. “We will form two lines,” he continued. “Here.” He touched the map again. “Spears, shields, to hem in the horses, and use the forest to guard our flanks. They do not like attacking in the woods—it turns their arrows.”

“By how many, Dmitrii Ivanovich?” demanded Mikhail again. Tver had been a greater principality than Moscow for most of its history, and rivals for the rest; alliance did not sit easily on them.

Dmitrii could not avoid answering. “Twice our force,” he said. “Perhaps a little more. But—”

Muttering went around the men. Mikhail of Tver spoke up again. He said, “Have you had word of Oleg of Ryazan?”

“Marching with Mamai.”

The muttering redoubled.

“It matters not,” Dmitrii went on. “We have men enough. We have the blessing of holy Sergius.”

“Enough?” snapped Mikhail of Tver. “A blessing is enough perhaps to save our souls when we are slaughtered on the field, but not to win this fight!”

Dmitrii was on his feet. His voice temporarily silenced the men’s murmurs. “Doubt the power of God, Mikhail Andreevich?”

“How will we know God is on our side? For all we know, God wants us to be humble, Christlike, and submissive to the Tatar!”

“Perhaps,” said a calm voice from the flap of the tent. “But if that were the case, would He have sent you the princes of Serpukhov and of Ryazan too?”

Heads swiveled; a few put hands on the hilts of their swords. A light kindled in the Grand Prince’s eyes.

Vladimir Andreevich walked into the tent. Behind him came Oleg of Ryazan. And behind them both Brother Aleksandr, who added, “God is with us, princes of Rus’, but there is no time to waste.”

THE GRAND PRINCE OF MOSCOW did not hear the whole tale until late that night, when all the planning was done. He and Sasha rode quietly out of camp, beyond the light and smoke and noise, until they came to a hidden hollow, with a low fire burning.

As he rode, Sasha noted uneasily that the moon had not yet set.

Vasya had made solitary camp and was waiting for them. Her feet were still bare, her face smudged, but she rose with dignity and bowed to the Grand Prince. “God be with you,” she said. Behind her, in deeper darkness, stood Pozhar, glowing.

“Mother of God,” said Dmitrii and crossed himself. “Is that a horse?”

Sasha had to swallow a laugh as his sister put out a hand to the mare, who promptly laid back her ears and snapped.

“A beast out of legend,” Vasya returned. The mare snorted disdainfully and moved off to graze. Vasya smiled.

“A fortnight ago,” said Dmitrii, searching her face in the moonlight, “you left at midnight to save one cousin. You came back with an army.”

“Are you thanking me for it?” she asked. “It was achieved partially by sheer accident, the rest through blundering.”

Vasya might make light of it, Sasha thought, but it had been a bitter fortnight. Through the Midnight darkness, they had ridden fast to Serpukhov, reducing Vladimir to prayers and muttering. Then had come the frantic mustering of Vladimir’s men, the long marches in the rain, to reach Kolomna in time, for Vasya could not, she said, take so many men through Midnight.

“You would be surprised at how many victories come so,” said Dmitrii.

Vasya was calm under his scrutiny. She and Dmitrii seemed to understand each other.

“You carry yourself differently,” said the Grand Prince. Half-joking, he asked, “Have you come into a realm of your own, in your travels?”

“I suppose,” she said. “A stewardship at least. Of a people as old as this land and of a strange country, far away. But how did you know?”

“A wise prince recognizes power.”

She said nothing.

“You brought armies to my mustering,” Dmitrii said. “If you indeed have command of a realm, then will you bring your own people to this fight—Knyazhna?”

The word—princess—stirred Sasha strangely.

“Greedy for more men, Dmitrii Ivanovich?” Vasya asked. A little color had come into her face.

“Yes,” he said. “I need every beast, every man, every creature, if we are to win.”

Sasha had never seen the likeness between Dmitrii Ivanovich and his sister. But he saw it now. Passion, cleverness, restless ambition. She said, “I have paid my debt to Moscow. Are you asking me to gather my own people now, and bring them to your battle? Your priests might call them devils.”

“Yes, I am asking,” said Dmitrii after the faintest pause. “What do you want of me in exchange?”

She was silent. Dmitrii waited. Sasha watched the light on the grass where the golden mare grazed and wondered at the look on his sister’s face.

Slowly, Vasya said, “I want a promise. But not just from you. From Father Sergei as well.”

Puzzled but not unwilling, Dmitrii said, “Then we will go to him in the morning.”

Vasya shook her head. “I am sorry—I would spare his years—but it must be here. And quickly.”

“Why here?” Dmitrii asked sharply. “And why now?”

“Because,” said Vasya, “it is midnight, there is no time to waste, and I am not the only one who must hear what he says.”

SASHA WENT, GALLOPING ON his gray Tuman, and not long after he led Father Sergei into the clearing. The moon hung strange and still in the sky. Vasya, waiting for her brother, wondered if Sasha knew that she had caught the four of them in Midnight until she chose to ride on—or go to sleep. But there was no sleep for her yet, that night. While they waited for Sasha, she and Dmitrii sat around her sinking fire, passing a skin back and forth, talking low-voiced.

“Where do you get your fine horses?” Dmitrii asked her. “First the bay and now this one.” He was eyeing Pozhar covetously. The golden mare laid back her ears and sidled away.

Vasya said drily, “She understands you, Gosudar. I didn’t get her from anywhere; she chose to bear me. If you want to win the allegiance of a horse like her, you would have to go questing through darkness, across three times nine realms; I suggest you concern yourself with your own beleaguered country first.”

Dmitrii looked undeterred. He had his mouth open on more questions. Vasya rose hastily when the monks appeared, and crossed herself. “Father bless,” she said.

“May the Lord bless you,” said the old monk.

Vasya took a deep breath and told them what she wanted.

Sergei was silent for a long time afterward, and Sasha and the prince watched him, frowning.

“They are wicked,” said Sergei at last. “They are the unclean forces of the earth.”

“Men are also wicked,” Vasya returned passionately. “And good, and everything in between. Chyerti are, just as men are, just as the earth herself is. Chyerti are sometimes wise and sometimes foolish, sometimes good and sometimes cruel. God rules the next world, but what of this one? Men may seek salvation in heaven and also make offerings to their hearth-spirits, to keep their house safe from evil. Did not God make chyerti, as He made everything else in heaven and earth?”

She spread her hands. “This is the price of my aid: Swear to me you will not condemn witches to burn. Swear to me you will not condemn those who leave offerings in their oven-mouths. Let our people have both their faiths.”

She faced Dmitrii. “So long as you or your descendants sit on the throne of Muscovy. And”—to Sergei—“your monks are establishing monasteries, building churches and hanging bells. Tell them also to let the people have their two faiths. For your promises, I will go into the night now, and I will bring the rest of Rus’ to your aid.”

No one spoke for a long time.

Vasya stood silent, straight and severe, and she waited. Sergei had his head bowed, his lips moving in silent prayer.

Dmitrii said, “If we do not agree?”

“Then,” said Vasya, “I will leave tonight. I will spend my days trying to protect what I can for as long as I can. You both will do the same, and we will both be the weaker.”

“If we agree, and we win this fight, what happens then?” asked Dmitrii. “If I have need of you again, will you come?”

“If you will do as I ask now,” said Vasya, “then as long as your reign lasts, when you call, I will come.”

Again, they measured each other.

“I agree,” said Dmitrii. “If Father Sergei does. A strong country cannot afford to have its strength divided. Even if its powers are not all of men.”

Sergei raised his head. “I will agree also,” he said. “The ways of God are strange.”

“Heard and witnessed,” Vasya said, and then she opened her hand. There was a thin line of blood on the meat of her thumb, black in the dim moonlight. She let her blood fall to the earth and two figures appeared. One was a man with one eye. The other was a woman with night-colored skin.

Dmitrii jerked backward; Sasha, who had seen them all along, stood still. Sergei’s eyes narrowed, and he muttered another prayer. “We have all witnessed your promise,” said Vasya. “And we will hold you to your word.”

DMITRII AND SERGEI, looking shaken, took their leave and rode back to their beds in Kolomna. Polunochnitsa said, “I have witnessed these men’s promises. Must I linger? I am not Medved; I do not love, endlessly, the strange doings of men.”

“No,” said Vasya. “Go if you wish. But if I call again, will you come?”

“I will come,” said Midnight. “If only to see the end. For you might have their promise, but you must keep your own now, and fight.”

She bowed and vanished into the night.

Sasha lingered with his sister. “Where are you going?”

She didn’t look up; she was throwing wet leaves over the fire. It went out with a hiss, plunging the clearing into gray starlight. “I am going to go find Oleg and take him back to his men,” said Vasya, straightening up. “See that word doesn’t get out that he was here; I am sure there are at least a few spies in Dmitrii’s camp. Although—” She smiled suddenly. “Who would believe it? He was with Mamai today and will be with him tomorrow.” She went to the golden mare.

Patiently, Sasha followed and said, “After that—then what do you mean to do?”

She had a hand on the mare’s neck. Looking over her shoulder, she countered with another question. “Where does Dmitrii mean to engage the Tatars?”

“They are bringing up their forces at a place called Snipes’ Field,” said Sasha. “Kulikovo. A few days’ march; Dmitrii must engage them before they finish gathering up their reinforcements. Three days, he says.”

“If you stay with the army,” Vasya said, “I will have no trouble finding it. I’ll come back to you in three days.”

“But where are you going?” her brother asked again.

“To harry the enemy.” She wasn’t looking at him when she said it. She was staring beyond him already, frowning into the dark. Pozhar, ears going back and forth, did not for once try to bite her.

Sasha caught her arm and spun her around. The mare shied irritably, blowing. His sister was scraped hollow with weariness, a fey glow in her expression. “Vasya.” He made his tone cold, an antidote to the reckless laughter lurking in her eyes. “What do you think will become of you, living in darkness with devils, and doing black magic?”

“I?” she shot back. “I am becoming myself, brother. I am a witch, and I am going to save us. Didn’t you hear Dmitrii?”

Sasha shot a glance beyond the golden mare, to where the one-eyed man watched, only faintly visible in the starlight and midnight darkness. His grip tightened on her arm. “You are my sister,” said Sasha. “You are Marya’s aunt. Your father was Pyotr Vladimirovich, of Lesnaya Zemlya. If you spend too long alone in the dark, you will forget that you are more than the witch of the wood, you will forget to come back into the light. Vasya, you are more than this night-creature, this—”

“This what, brother?”

“This thing,” Sasha went on ruthlessly, with a jerk of his chin toward the watching devil. “He wants you to forget yourself. He would be glad if you went mad, went wild, were lost forever in dark woods, like our great-grandmother. Do you know the risk you are running, traveling alone with that creature?”

“She doesn’t,” put in the Bear, listening.

Vasya ignored him. “I am learning,” she said. “But even if I were not—is there a choice?”

“Yes,” Sasha said. “Come back to Kolomna with me and I will look after you.”

“Brother, I can’t; did you not hear my promise to Dmitrii?”

“Damn Dmitrii; he thinks only of his crown.”

“Sasha, do not be afraid for me.”

“I am though,” he said. “For your life and for your soul.”

“They are both in my keeping, and not yours,” she said gently. But a little of the wildness had gone from her expression. She took a deep breath. “I will not forget what you said. I am your sister, and I love you. Even wandering in darkness.”

“Vasya,” he said, his voice heavy with reluctance. “Better even the winter-king than that beast.”

“You both have an exaggerated idea of my brother’s good qualities,” said the Bear, just as Vasya snapped, “The winter-king is not here!” In a calmer voice, she went on, “For it is not winter. I must use the tools I have.”

The mare shook her mane and stamped, obviously eager to be gone.

“We are going,” said Vasya to her, as though the mare had actually spoken. Her voice was a little ragged. She pulled away. “Farewell, Sasha.” She swung to the mare’s back and looked down at her brother’s troubled face. “I won’t forget what you told me.”

Sasha merely nodded.

“In three days,” said Vasya.

Then the mare bounded forward, bucking, and his sister was at once lost in the night. The devil looked back, winked at Sasha, and followed.

VASYA LEFT OLEG WHERE she’d met him, at the edge of the scrubby steppe where his men were encamped, a day’s march from Kulikovo. Pozhar cow-kicked the Grand Prince of Ryazan as he slid down her golden flank and said very definitely, That is the last time I carry one of his kind ever again. He is heavy.

Oleg said, at the same moment, “I will leave riding the horses of legend to you, witch-girl. It is like trying to ride a thunderstorm.”

Vasya could only laugh. She said, “If I were you, I’d delay your march to join Mamai. They are going to have a bad few days. I will see you at the battle.”

“God willing,” said Oleg Ivanovich, and bowed.

Vasya inclined her head, turned Pozhar, and then they were back on the Midnight-road.

MOTHER OF GOD, I am tired of darkness, Vasya thought. Pozhar’s sure feet made nothing of the night, the changing landscape, but there was no comfort in the surge of the mare’s running, her jutting withers and swift strides. Vasya rubbed her face, and tried to focus her mind. Her brother’s warning had shaken her. He was right. All the anchor-stones of her life had gone: home and family and sometimes it seemed her very self, lost in the fire. Even Morozko had gone, not to return until the snow fell. Now her companion in the darkness was a creature whose nature was madness given flesh. But sometimes he sounded ordinary, even sensible, and every time that happened she had to remind herself to keep up her defenses.

Now the Bear was pacing the golden mare, beast-shaped. “Men will not keep their word,” he said.

“I do not recall asking for your opinion,” she snapped.

“Better for chyerti to fight them, before they destroy us,” the Bear went on. She could hear the echo of men screaming in his low voice. “Or better yet, let the Russians and the Tatars destroy each other.”

“Dmitrii and Sergei will keep their word,” she said.

“Have you ever thought what meddling in their war will cost you?” he said. “What price Dmitrii’s promise and his admiration? I saw the look in your eyes when Dmitrii called you princess.”

“Is the prize not worth the risk?”

“That depends,” said the Bear, as they ran through Midnight. “I am not sure you know what you’re risking.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t trust his seeming-sense any more than she trusted his wickedness.

THE LAKE WAS DARK in the moonlight, rippling black, white dazzles on the crests of the waves. No long, terrifying journey on foot for her this time; Vasya found the lake swiftly, as though her blood remembered it.

She and Pozhar and the Bear burst out of the trees and found themselves beside the great stretch of moonlit water. Vasya’s breath caught in her throat and she slid down the mare’s shoulder.

The horses were grazing where she’d last seen them, near the shore. This time they didn’t run from her but stood, ghostly in the cold mist of early autumn night, raised their flawless heads and looked. Pozhar pricked her ears and called softly to her kin.

The witch’s empty house stood black and still on its tall posts, on the other side of the field. Still a grim ruin, the domovaya asleep once more, perhaps, waiting in her oven. Vasya let herself briefly imagine the house warm with firelight, with laughter, her family close, the horses—a great herd—grazing in the starlight outside.

One day.

But that night, she was there neither for the house, nor for the horses.

“Ded Grib!” she called.

The little chyert, glowing green in the dark, was waiting for her in the shadow of the great oak. He gave a small cry, ran toward her, then halted halfway. Either he was trying to look dignified, or the Bear made him nervous, Vasya could not tell.

“Thank you, my friend,” Vasya said to him, and bowed. “For asking Pozhar to come to me. You both saved my life.”

Ded Grib looked proud. “I think she likes me,” he confided. “That is why she went. She likes me because we both glow at night.”

Pozhar snorted and shook her mane. Ded Grib added, “Why did you come back? Are you going to stay now? Why is the Eater with you?” The mushroom-spirit looked suddenly fierce. “He is not to kick over any of my mushrooms.”

“That depends,” said the Bear pointedly. “If my brave mistress does not give me something better to do than run to and fro in the dark, I will happily kick over all your mushrooms.”

Ded Grib bristled. “He is not going to touch anything of yours,” said Vasya to Ded Grib, glaring at the Bear. “He is traveling with me now. We came back for you because I need your help.”

“I knew you couldn’t do without me!” cried Ded Grib, triumphantly. “Even if now you have allies that are bigger.” He gave the Bear a very hard look.

“This is going to be a terrible war,” the Bear interjected. “What damage do you expect to do with a mushroom?”

“You’ll see,” said Vasya, and offered her hand to the little mushroom-spirit.

MAMAI’S ARMY WAS STRUNG out along the Don. The vanguard was already settled at Kulikovo, the reserves encamped in stages for a great distance to the south, ready to march up at first light. Moving softly through Midnight, Vasya and the mare and the two chyerti capped a small rise, and peered through the trees at the host below.

Ded Grib’s eyes grew huge, seeing the scale of the sleeping enemy. His green-glowing limbs quivered. There were fires along the bank as far as the eye could see. “There are so many,” he whispered.

Vasya, surveying the immense stretch of men and horses, said, “We’d best get to work then. But first—”

Pozhar would not take saddle or saddlebag; Vasya had to carry a pouch slung around her instead, annoying when riding fast. From it she withdrew bread and strips of hard smoked meat: Dmitrii’s parting gift. She gnawed a bit herself, and without thinking, tossed some to her two allies.

Utter silence; she looked up to find Ded Grib holding his bit of bread, looking pleased. But the Bear was staring at her, holding the meat in his hand, not eating.

“An offering?” he said, almost growling. “You have my service; do you want still more of me?”

“Not at present,” said Vasya coldly. “It’s just food.” She gave him a scowl and resumed chewing.

“Why?” he asked.

She had no answer. She hated his wantonness, his cruelty, his laughter, and hated it even more because something of her own nature called out in answer. Perhaps that was why. She could not hate him, for to do so would be to risk hating herself. “You have not betrayed me yet,” said Vasya at last.

“As you say,” said the Bear. But he still sounded puzzled. Holding her gaze, he ate. Then he shook himself and smiled down chillingly at the sleeping encampment, licking his fingers. Vasya, reluctantly, rose and went to join him. “I don’t know about mold, little mushroom,” said the Bear to Ded Grib. “But fear leaps between men like sickness. Their numbers won’t help with that. Come, let us begin.”

Ded Grib gave the Bear a frightened look. He had put his bread away; now he said tremulously to Vasya, “What do you want me to do?”

She brushed the crumbs from her shirt. A little food had restored her, but now a fearful night’s work loomed.

“If you can—blight their bread,” said Vasya, and turned away from the Bear’s grin. “I want them hungry.”

Down they went into the sleeping encampment, foot by foot. Vasya had wrapped rags around the faint shimmer of gold on her arms. Her knife or the Bear’s claws tore the boxes and bags of the army’s food, and where Ded Grib plunged his hands, the flour and meat began to soften and stink.

When Ded Grib seemed to have the idea, she left him and the Bear to creep unseen among the tents of Mamai, spreading terror and rot in their wake. For her part, she slipped down to the river to call the vodianoy of the Don.

“The chyerti have made an alliance with the Grand Prince of Moscow,” she told him, low. When she had related all her tale, she then persuaded him to raise the river so that the Tatars would not sleep dry.

THREE NIGHTS LATER THE TATAR army was in disarray along its length, and Vasya hated herself anyway.

“You can’t kill any of them asleep,” she told the Bear, when he sniffed, grinning, at a man who thrashed in the grip of a nightmare. “Even if they can’t see us, it’s not…” She trailed off, with no words for her revulsion. Medved surprised her by shrugging and stepping back.

“Of course not,” he said. “That is not the way. An assassin in the dark can be fought, can be found, and killed. Fear is more potent still, and people fear what they can’t see, and don’t understand. I will show you.”

God help her, he had. Like some foul apprenticeship, she walked with the Bear through the Tatar camp and together they spread terror in their wake. She set fires in wagons and tents, made men scream at half-glimpsed shadows. She terrified their horses, though it hurt her to see them wild-eyed and running.

The girl and the two chyerti traveled from one end of the spread-out force to the other. They gave Mamai and his army no rest. Horses broke their pickets and fled. When the Tatars lit fires, the flames flared up without warning, and sent sparks into unsuspecting faces. The soldiers whispered that they were haunted by a beast, by monsters that glowed, by a ghost-girl with eyes too large in the sharp planes of her face.

“Men make themselves afraid,” the Bear told her, smiling. “Imagining is worse than anything they actually see. All it takes is whispers in the dark. Come with me now, Vasilisa Petrovna.”

By the third night he was swollen with pleasure like a tick. Vasya was worn to a thread, sick for the dawn. “Enough,” she told them both, after yet another stretch roaming the camp, every sense on alert, half-frightened, half-sharing the Bear’s mad glee at the mischief.

“Enough. I am going to find a place to sleep, and then we’ll go back to my brother in the light.” She could bear no more darkness.

Ded Grib looked relieved; the Bear, merely satiated.

The air was chilly and blank with cold mist. She found a sheltered hollow in the thickest part of the wood, well away from the main body of troops. Even wrapped in her cloak, on a bed of pine-boughs, she shivered. She dared not light a fire.

The Bear was untroubled by the weather. As a beast, he’d terrorized the Tatar camp, but now, at rest, he looked like a man. He lay contentedly in the bracken, looking up into the night with his arms behind his head.

Ded Grib was hiding under a rock, his green glow faint. Spoiling the Tatars’ food had wearied and discouraged him. “They drink the milk of their horses,” he’d said. “I can’t spoil that. They won’t be too hungry.”

Vasya had no answer for Ded Grib; she was feeling sick herself. The panic of men and beasts seemed to echo in her bones, but still she didn’t know if all their efforts would be enough to turn the tide of the coming battle. “You are quite disgusting,” she told the Bear, seeing the flash of his teeth when he smiled.

He didn’t even lift his head. “Why? Because I’ve been enjoying myself?”

The glimmering gold on Vasya’s wrists reminded her, uneasily, of the covenant between them. She didn’t speak.

He rolled onto his elbow to look at her, a smile playing about his twisted mouth. “Or because you have?”

Deny it? Why? It would only give him power. “Yes,” she said. “I liked frightening them. They invaded my country, and Chelubey tortured my brother. But I am sick at myself too, and ashamed, and very tired.”

The Bear looked faintly disappointed. “You ought to flog yourself a bit more over it,” he said, and rolled onto his back once more.

That way lay madness: hiding from the worst parts of her own nature until, out of sight, they became monstrous growths to devour the rest of her. She knew that, and the Bear knew it too. “That was what Father Konstantin did. Look where it got him,” she said.

The Bear said nothing.

The Tatar army was out of sight, but still close enough to smell. Even bone-tired, irritable with damp, she was oppressed by the sheer weight of their numbers. She had promised Oleg magic, but she didn’t know if there was enough magic in the world to give Dmitrii his victory.

“Do you know what you are going to say to my brother, when the snow falls?” asked the Bear, still looking at the sky.

“What?” she said, jolted by the question.

“His power will be waxing now, as mine is waning. You can bind me with threats and promises, but soon”—the Bear sniffed the air—“very soon, you’re going to have to face the winter-king. Do you mean to threaten him?” The Bear smiled slowly. “I’d like to see you try. Oh, he will be so angry. I enjoy this world: the ugliness and the beauty, and meddling in the doings of men. Karachun does not.” The Bear winked at her. “For your sake he spent his strength, went into Moscow, fought me in summer, against his nature. But then you turned around and freed me. He will be very angry.”

“What I say to him is not your concern,” said Vasya coldly.

“It most certainly is,” said Medved. “But I can wait. I like surprises.”

She’d had no murmur of the winter-king since he left her in Moscow. Did Morozko know she’d set his brother free? Would he understand why? Did she? “I am going to sleep,” she said to the Bear. “You are not to betray me or draw attention to us or use someone else to draw attention to us, or awaken me, or touch me, or—”

The Bear laughed and lifted a hand. “Enough, girl, you’ve already exhausted my imagination. Go to sleep.”

She gave him one more narrow-eyed look, and then she turned over. The Bear reasonable, laughing, was much more dangerous than the beast in the clearing.

SHE WAS AWAKENED, a little before daybreak, by a scream. Heart hammering, she lurched to her feet. The Bear was peering through the trees, looking quite untroubled. “I was wondering when they were going to notice,” he said without looking round.

“Notice what?”

“That village there. I imagine most of the villagers took what they could and fled, with the army camped so close. But—someone didn’t. And your Tatars are tired of mare’s milk.”

Vasya, feeling sick, crossed to his vantage point.

It was only a tiny village, hidden in a fold of the land, sheltered by great trees. It probably would have gone unnoticed, had the Tatars not been roaming for food to fill their bellies. Even she hadn’t seen it.

She wondered if the Bear had.

But now it was afire in a dozen places.

Another scream, smaller and thinner now. “Pozhar,” said Vasya. The mare sidled up to her, huffing unhappily; for once she made no objection when Vasya vaulted to her back.

“Far be it from me,” said the Bear, “to curb your so-charming impulses, but I doubt very much you’ll like what you see.” He added, “And you could be killed.”

Vasya said, “If I can put folk to such risk, the least I can do is—”

“The Tatars put them at risk—”

But Vasya was already gone.

By the time she got to the tiny hamlet, the houses had burned almost to the ground. If there had been animals, there weren’t any now. Silence, emptiness. Unwilling hope rose in her. Perhaps all the villagers had run at the first sign of the Tatars; perhaps it was only a pig, dying, that had made a sound like a scream.

That was when she heard the small, choking moan, not quite a cry.

Pozhar’s ears swiveled; at the same time, Vasya saw a slender dark shape, huddled near a burning house.

Vasya slid down Pozhar’s shoulder, caught the woman and dragged her back from the flames. Her hand came away sticky with blood. The woman made a fainter sound of pain, but did not speak. The light of the burning houses illuminated her, pitilessly. She’d had her throat cut, but not well enough to kill her at once.

She’d also been pregnant. Laboring perhaps. That was why she’d not fled when her people did. If anyone had stayed with her, Vasya couldn’t see. There was only the woman, scrapes on her hands, where she had pushed off men, and blood—so much blood—on her skirts. Vasya laid a hand on her belly, but it didn’t stir, and there was a great, seeping wound there too…

The woman was gasping for air, her lips turning blue. Her dim eyes sought Vasya’s face. Vasya took her bloody hand in hers.

“My child?” the woman whispered.

“You’ll see her soon,” said Vasya, steadily.

“Where is she?” said the woman. “I can’t hear her cry. There were men—oh!” A choking gasp. “Did they hurt her?”

“No,” said Vasya. “She is safe, and you will see her. Come, we will pray to God.”

Otche Nash—the Lord’s Prayer was soft and familiar, comforting; the woman joined in as she could even as her stare grew fixed and empty. Vasya didn’t know she’d begun to cry until a tear fell onto their joined hands. She lifted her head to see the death-god standing there, his white horse at his side.

Their eyes met, but his face was without expression. Vasya shut the woman’s eyes, laid her on the earth and stepped back. He did not speak. Her body lay still on the earth, but nonetheless the death-god seemed to gather the woman in his arms, gently, and put her on his horse. Vasya made the sign of the cross.

We can share this world.

He turned his eyes again to Vasya’s face. Was there a flicker of feeling there? Anger? A question? No—only the death-god’s ancient indifference. He swung to the white mare’s back and rode away, silent as he’d come.

Vasya was soaked with the woman’s blood and burning with shame, that she’d been sleeping in the woods thinking herself clever, while others bore the burden of the Tatars’ anger.

“Well,” said the Bear, coming up beside her, “you’ve put an end to my brother’s indifference, that’s certain. Poor fool, is he doomed to regret every dead girl he carries away over his saddlebow?” The Bear looked pleased at the prospect. “I congratulate you. I’ve been trying to make him feel things for years, rage mostly, but he’s as cold as his season.”

Vasya barely heard him.

“It will be delightful to see what happens when the snow comes,” the Bear added.

She only turned her head slowly. “There is no priest,” she said, low. “I could do nothing for her.”

“Why would you?” asked the Bear, impatient. “Her own people will come out of hiding soon enough, and they will pray and weep and do all that’s needful. Besides, she’s dead, she won’t care.”

“If I—if I hadn’t—”

The Bear gave her a look of outright scorn. “Hadn’t what? You are playing for all of Rus’ seen and unseen, not one peasant girl’s life.”

She pressed her lips together. “You might have woken me,” she said. “I could have saved her.”

“Could you?” the Bear asked calmly. “Perhaps. But I enjoyed the screaming. And you told me not to wake you.”

She turned away from him and vomited. When she had done, she rose and got water from the stream. She washed the blood from the dead woman’s body and composed her limbs. Then Vasya went back to the stream and scrubbed herself, by the light of the dying fires, heedless of the chill. She scraped at her skin with handfuls of sand until she was shuddering with cold. Then she cleaned the blood from her clothes, and put them wet on her body.

When she had done, she turned around to find the Bear and Ded Grib both watching her. Neither said a word. Ded Grib looked solemn. The Bear’s face was free for once of mockery; he looked puzzled instead.

Vasya shook the water from her hair and addressed Ded Grib first. “Do you mean to come to the battle, my friend?”

Ded Grib shook his head slowly. “I am only a mushroom,” he whispered. “I do not like the fear and the fire, and I am tired of these fighting-men; they have no care for growing things.”

“I have liked it,” said Vasya, determined not to spare herself. “The fear and the fire of these last nights. It made me feel free, and strong, to make others afraid. Others paid the price for my pleasure. Ded Grib, I will see you at the lake, God willing.”

Ded Grib nodded, and vanished between the trees. The sun was just rising. Vasya took a deep breath. “Let us go to Dmitrii Ivanovich, and make an end.”

“The first sensible thing you’ve said since you woke up,” said the Bear.

32. Kulikovo

THE RUSSIANS RODE DOWN TO Kulikovo at the close of the third day, and made camp. Even Dmitrii was silent, except to give the necessary orders, settling the men for the night, deploying his forces for the dawn. He’d had reports, of course, of the numbers. But reports were different than seeing something with his own eyes.

Mamai had finished bringing up his main host. They spread out in a single line across the field, as far as the eye could reach.

“The men are afraid,” said Sasha to Dmitrii and Vladimir, as they rode down to the mouth of the Nepryadva, a tributary of the Don, to reconnoiter the ground. “Praying will not make them less so. We may tell them all the day that God is on our side but the men can see the numbers across the field. Dmitrii Ivanovich, they have more than twice our force, and more are coming up.”

“I can see the numbers across the field,” put in Vladimir. “I am not happy myself.”

Dmitrii’s and Vladimir’s attendants were riding out of earshot, but even they looked at the opposing host and whispered, sallow-faced.

“There is nothing to do now,” said Dmitrii. “Besides praying, feeding the men well this night, and getting them into battle tomorrow before they have time to think too much.”

“There is one other thing we could do,” said Sasha.

Both his cousins turned to look at him.

“What?” said Vladimir. He’d been suspicious of Sasha ever since their reunion, wary of his unholy allies and of the existence of Vasya, his sister-in-law with her strange powers.

“Challenge them to single combat,” said Sasha.

A silence fell among the three of them. Single combat was a kind of augury. It wouldn’t halt the battle, but the winner would have God’s favor, and everyone in both armies would know it.

“It would put heart in the men,” said Sasha. “It would make all the difference.”

“If our champion won,” said Vladimir.

“If our champion won,” acknowledged Sasha, but his eyes were on Dmitrii.

Dmitrii did not speak. His eyes were on the mud and water of the open field, and beyond, to where the Tatars waited, their horses numberless as autumn leaves in the westering light. Beyond them, the Don river lay like a bar of silver. For three days, it had rained, heavy and cold. Now the sky had darkened and seemed to promise early snow.

Slowly Dmitrii said, “Do you think they’d agree to such a thing?”

“Yes,” said Sasha. “I do. Are they to seem afraid to send a champion out?”

“If I ask and they agree, then whom should I name to fight for us?” said Dmitrii. But he spoke in the tone of a man who knows the answer.

“Me,” said Sasha.

Dmitrii said, “I have a hundred men who could do it. Why you?”

“I am the best fighter,” said Sasha. He wasn’t boasting, but stating a fact. “I am a monk, a servant of God. I am your best chance.”

Dmitrii said, “I need you at my side, Sasha, not—”

“Cousin,” said Sasha fiercely. “I broke my father’s heart, leaving home as a boy. I have not been true to my vows, for I could never stay quiet at the monastery. But never have I betrayed the soil that bore me; I have kept faith with it and defended it. I will defend it now, before both our hosts.”

Vladimir said, “He is right. It might make all the difference. Frightened men are beaten men, you know it as well as I.” Grudgingly he added, “And he fights well.”

Dmitrii still looked unwilling. But he looked again at the host opposing them, half-obscured now by the dying light. “I will not deny you,” said Dmitrii. “You are the best of us. The men know it.” He paused again. “Tomorrow morning then,” he said heavily. “If the Tatars are willing. I will send a messenger. But you are not to get yourself killed, Sasha.”

“Never,” said Sasha, and smiled. “My sisters would be angry.”

IT WAS ALMOST FULL DARK when Sasha left the princes for the night. Dmitrii’s messenger had not yet returned, but he needed to sleep, against whatever the day brought.

He had no ger, just a fire of his own, a patch of dry earth, and his horse hobbled near. When he got closer, he saw the golden mare standing next to his own Tuman.

Vasya had built up his fire and seated herself beside it. She looked weary and sad. The fey, mad creature of the night at Kolomna was gone.

“Vasya,” he said. “Where have you been?”

“Harrying an army, in the company of the most ill-natured of devils,” said Vasya. “Learning yet again the limits of what I can do.” Her voice cracked.

“I think,” said Sasha gently, “that you’ve done too much.”

She rubbed her face, still slumped on the log between the horses’ feet. “I don’t know if it was enough. I even tried to creep in and kill the general, but he is well guarded now—learned his lesson after I got Vladimir away. I—I didn’t want to die trying. I set fire to his tent though.”

Sasha said firmly, “It was enough. You gave us a chance when there was none before. It was enough.”

“I tried setting men afire,” she said, with choked confession, the words spilling out. “I tried—while the Bear laughed. But I couldn’t. He said that it is hardest to do magic on creatures that have a mind of their own and I didn’t know enough.”

“Vasya—”

“But I set other things afire. Bowstrings and wagons. I laughed, to see them burn. And—they killed a woman. A woman in labor. Because their supply was spoiled, and they were angry and hungry.”

Sasha said, “God rest her spirit then. But Vasya—stop. We have a chance. Your courage gave it to us, and your blood. It is enough. Do not lament what you cannot change.”

Vasya said nothing, but when her distracted eyes fell on his fire, the flames leaped high, even though there was precious little wood in it to burn, and her fists clenched so that her nails bit into her palms. “Vasya,” said Sasha sharply. “Enough of that. When did you last eat?”

She thought. “I—yesterday morning,” she said. “I could not bear to wait and go back into Midnight, so Pozhar and I came here as the crow flies, staying out of sight of Mamai’s army.”

“Very well,” said Sasha firmly. “I am going to make soup. Yes, here. I have my own supply and I am capable—we do not have serving-women in the Lavra. You are going to eat and then sleep. Everything else can wait.”

It was a measure of her weariness that she didn’t argue.

They didn’t speak much, while the water boiled, and when he dished out her food, she said, almost inaudibly, “Thank you,” and swallowed it down. Three bowls, with flatbread of flour paste on a hot rock, and a little color had come back into her face.

He handed her his cloak. “Go to sleep,” he said.

“What about you?”

“Tonight, I mean to pray.” He thought of telling her then, about what the next day might hold. But he didn’t. She looked so worn, so tired. The last thing she needed was a night of broken sleep, afraid for him. And it was possible the Tatars would refuse the challenge.

“Stay near at least?” she said.

“Of course I’ll stay.”

She nodded once, eyelids already heavy. Sasha, studying her, surprised himself by saying, “You look just like our mother.”

Her eyes opened at that; sudden pleasure drove away the shadows in her face. He said, smiling, “Our mother always put bread in the oven at night. For the domovoi.”

“I did the same,” said Vasya. “When I lived at Lesnaya Zemlya.”

“Father teased her for it. He was always content, in those days. They—they loved each other very much.”

Vasya was sitting up now. “Dunya did not speak much of her. Not when I was old enough to remember. I think—I think Anna Ivanovna forbade it. For our father did not love her, and he had loved our mother.”

“They were a joy to each other,” said Sasha. “Even as a boy, I could see it.”

It was hard to speak of that time. He had ridden away the year after his mother died. Would he have stayed, if she had lived? He didn’t know. Ever since he came to the Lavra, he had tried to forget the boy he had been: Aleksandr Petrovich, with his faith and his strength, his enthusiasms and foolish pride. The boy who had worshipped his mother.

But now he found himself remembering. He found himself talking. To his sister, he spoke of Midwinter feasts, and childhood mishaps, of his first sword, his first horse, his mother’s voice raised laughing in the forest ahead of him. He spoke of her hands, her songs, her offerings.

Then he spoke of the Lavra in winter, the deep calm of the monastery, the bell ringing out over the dreaming forest, the slow round of prayers that marked the cold days, the steady faith of his master, whom men came to see from many days’ travel in all directions. He spoke of the days on horseback, and the nights around his fire; he spoke of Sarai and Moscow and places in between.

He spoke of Russia. Not of Muscovy, or Tver, or Vladimir, the principalities of the sons of Kiev, but of Russia itself, of its skies and its soil, its people and its pride.

She listened in rapt stillness, eyes vast and filled like cups with shadow. “That is what we are fighting for,” said Sasha. “Not for Moscow, or even Dmitrii; not for the sake of any of her squabbling princes. But for the land that bore us; man and devil alike.”

33. On the Cusp of Winter

VASYA AWAKENED TO THE TOUCH of early snow on her face.

Sasha had fallen asleep at last, the murmur of his prayers stilled, in the deep hush of night. The air had a crisp bite; the earth was just rimed with frost. The men’s voices all around had sunk to silence. All who could sleep were sleeping, to gather strength against the dawn.

A chill wind raced through the Russian camp, fluttering their banners, and sending snow in eddies over the earth.

Vasya took a deep breath and got to her feet, pausing to lay the cloak over her sleeping brother. She saw the Bear. He was in the form of a man, standing perfectly still, beyond the red coals of their fire. He was watching the scanty flakes drift down from the sky.

“It is early for snow,” said Vasya.

For the first time, there was a hint of fear beneath the exalted malice in the Bear’s face. “It is my brother’s power waxing,” he said. “One more test, sea-maiden. And it might be the hardest.”

Vasya straightened her back.

The winter-king rode out of the dark, as though the cold wind had blown him to her, his mare’s hooves soundless against the muddy, white-glazed earth.

The two armies, even her sleeping brother, might not have existed. There was only herself, the king of chaos, and the king of winter, wrapped in a whirl of new snow. Morozko was not the thin, almost formless creature of high summer, nor was he the magnificent velvet-clad lord of midwinter. He was dressed all in white; the first bitter breath of the new season.

He halted and slid from the back of his horse.

Her throat was dry. “Winter-king,” she said.

He surveyed her, up and down. He did not look at the Bear, but his not-looking had a force all its own. “I knew you meant to fight, Vasilisa Petrovna,” he said, after a moment. “I didn’t know the manner you would choose.”

Only then did his glance find his brother. A spark of old hatred leaped between them. “You were always insufferable, Karachun,” said the Bear. “What did you think would happen, when you left her to fight a war she had no notion how to win?”

“I thought you had learned some wisdom,” said Morozko, turning back to Vasya. “You have seen what he is capable of.”

“You knew what he was capable of, better than I,” said Vasya. “Yet you also freed the Bear because you were desperate. I was desperate too. Just as he swore you an oath then, he has sworn one to me now.”

She raised her hands. The two ropes glowed at her wrists, power quiescent in the oily gold. “Has he?” said Morozko, with a cold glance at them. “And after he swore? What then? Have you been roving about, terrorizing men in his company? Have you gotten a taste for cruelty?”

“Do you not know me?” she said. “I have loved danger since I was a child. But I have never loved cruelty.”

Morozko’s eyes searched her face, searched and searched until she looked away, getting angry. He snapped, “Look at me!”

She snapped back, “What are you looking for?”

“Madness,” he said. “Malice. Do you think all dangers posed by the Bear are obvious? He will work on your mind, until one day you laugh at bloodshed and suffering.”

“I am not laughing yet,” she said, but his eyes went again to the gold on her wrists. Was she supposed to feel ashamed? “I have taken power where I could find it. But I have not turned to evil.”

“Have you not? He is clever. You will fall unknowing.”

“I haven’t had time to fall, knowing or unknowing.” She was really angry now. “I have been running through the dark, trying to save all who have need of me. I have done good and I have done evil, but I am neither. I am only myself. You will not make me ashamed, Morozko.”

“Truly,” said the Bear to her, “I hate to agree with him, but you should probably feel guiltier over it. Berate yourself a bit.”

She ignored him. Nearer she stepped to the winter-king, until she could read his face, even in the dark. And there was feeling there for her to read: anger, hunger, fear, even grief, his indifference torn to shreds.

Her anger left her. She took his hand. He let her have it, his fingers cool and light in hers. She said softly, “I called every power of this land to war, winter-king. It had to be done. We cannot fight amongst ourselves.”

“He killed your father,” said Morozko.

She swallowed. “I know. And now he is bound to help save my people.” She lifted her free hand, touched his cheek. She was close enough now to see him breathe. She framed his face with her fingers, drew his eyes back to her. The snow was falling faster from the sky. “Will you fight with us tomorrow?” she asked.

“I will be there for the dead,” he said. His glance strayed away from her, to the camp at large. She wondered how many would see the next day’s dusk. “You need not be there at all. It is not too late. You’ve done what you can; you’ve kept your word. You and your brother can—”

“It is too late,” she said. “Sasha would never leave Dmitrii now. And I—I too am pledged.”

“Pledged to your pride,” retorted Morozko. “You want the obedience of chyerti and the admiration of princes, so you are taking this mad risk alongside Dmitrii. But you have never seen a battle.”

“No, I haven’t,” she said, her voice gone as cold as his. She had dropped her hands, but she did not step back. “Though yes, I want Dmitrii’s admiration. I want a victory. I even want power, over princes and chyerti. I am allowed to want things, winter-king.”

They were near enough to breathe the other’s breath. “Vasya,” he said, low. “Think beyond this one battle. The world is safer if the Bear is in his clearing, and you must live; you cannot—”

She cut him off. “I already have. And I swore your brother wouldn’t have to go back. We understand each other, he and I. Sometimes it frightens me.”

“I am not surprised,” he said. “Spirit of sea and fire that you are; he is the worst parts of your own nature writ large.” His hands were on her shoulders now. “Vasya, he is a danger to you.”

“Then keep me safe.” She raised her eyes to his. “Pull me back, when he drags me too far down. There is a balance to be struck here too, Morozko, between him and you, between men and chyerti. I was born to be in between—do you think I don’t know it?”

His eyes were sad. “Yes,” he said. “I know.” He looked up at the Bear again, and this time the two brothers were silent, measuring each other. “It is your choice and not mine, Vasilisa Petrovna.”

Vasya heard the Bear exhale and realized that he really had been afraid.

She let her head fall forward an instant to the wool and fur of Morozko’s shoulder, felt his hands slide around her back and hold her there briefly, suspended between day and night, between order and chaos. Take me somewhere quiet, she wanted to say. I cannot bear the noise and the stink of men anymore.

But the time for that was past; she had chosen her course. She lifted her head and stepped back.

Morozko reached into his sleeve and drew out something small and shining.

“I brought this for you,” he said.

It was a green jewel on a cord, rougher than the formal perfection of the sapphire necklace she’d once worn. She did not touch it, but stared, wary. “Why?”

“I went far away,” said Morozko. “That is why I did not come to you, even dreaming, even when you plucked the Bear from his prison. I went south, through the snows of my own kingdom; I took the road to the sea. There, I called Chernomor, the sea-king, out of the water, who has not been seen for many lives of men.”

“Why did you go?”

Morozko hesitated. “I told him what he never knew, that the witch of the wood had borne him children.”

She stared. “Children? To the king of the sea?”

He nodded once. “Twins. And I told him that among his grandchildren’s children was one I loved. And so, the sea-king gave this to me. For you.” He almost smiled. “There is no magic in it now, and no binding. It is a gift.”

She still didn’t reach for the jewel. “How long have you known?”

“Not as long as you think, although I wondered whence your strength. I wondered if it could be only the witch, a mortal woman with magic who’d passed her talent to her daughters. But then I saw Varvara, and I knew it was more than that. Chernomor has fathered sons, now and again, and often they have their father’s magic, and lives that are longer than the lives of men. So I asked Midnight for the truth, and she told me. You are the sea-king’s great-grandchild.”

“Will I live a long time then?”

“I do not know—who could know? For you are witch and chyert and woman too; a descendant of Russian princes and Pyotr Vladimirovich’s daughter. Chernomor might know; he said he would answer questions, but only if you came to see him.”

It was too much to take in. But she took the jewel. It was warm in her hand; she caught a faint whiff of salt. It felt as though he’d handed her a key to herself, but one she could not examine. There was too much else to do.

“Then I will go to the sea,” she said. “If I survive the dawn.”

He said heavily, “I will be at the battle. But my task is still the dead, Vasya.”

“Mine is the living,” said the Bear, and he smiled. “What a pair we are, my twin.”

34. Lightbringer

GRIM DAY, AND ALL ABOUT them the army was stirring; beyond, far out on the great field of Kulikovo, the Tatars were awake. The Russians could hear the Tatars’ horses snorting into the chill. But nothing could be seen; the world was obscured in thick mist.

“No battle until the fog burns off,” said Sasha. He had no stomach for food, but he drank a little mead, passed the bottle to Vasya. When he woke, he’d found her already awake, sitting alone before his renewed fire, a line between her brows, pale but composed.

It was cold, the sky gray above the mist, promising more early snow. Then the sun heaved a cold rim over the edge of the earth, and the mist began to thin. He drew a deep breath. “I must go to Dmitrii. He is waiting for a messenger. Whatever happens, I will find you before the fighting begins. In the meantime, go with God, sister. You are to go unseen and run no risks.”

“No,” she said and smiled reassuringly. “My business is with chyerti this day. Not with the swords of men.”

“I love you, Vasochka,” he said, and left her.

THE MESSENGER HAD RETURNED, and the Tatars had accepted Dmitrii’s challenge. They had also brought the name of Mamai’s champion. Sasha and Dmitrii heard it with the same cold thrill of rage.

“I have dozens of men who would take your place,” said Dmitrii. “But—”

“Not with this champion,” said Sasha. “If he is not to be yours, then he is mine, brother.”

Dmitrii did not disagree. They stood together in his tent, while attendants ran in and out. All about them was the neighing and the ringing of steel and the shouts of the waking army. The Grand Prince offered his cousin bread, and Sasha forced a little of it down.

“Besides,” Sasha added, keeping the anger from his voice. “Another man would take the glory for his own city: for Tver or Vladimir or Suzdal. It must be for Rus’ and for God, brother, for on this field we are one people.”

“One people,” said Dmitrii thoughtfully. “Did your sister return? With her—followers?”

“Yes,” said Sasha, and gave his cousin a dark look. “She is tempered like steel now and so very young, and I blame you for pulling her into this.”

Dmitrii did not look repentant. “She knows the stakes as well as I.”

Sasha said, “She says let men beware of the river. And also to trust that the trees will conceal them, and to fear neither storm nor fire.”

“I can’t decide if that is welcome or ominous,” said Dmitrii.

“Perhaps both,” said Sasha. “Nothing about my sister is simple. Brother, if I—”

Dmitrii shook his head sharply. “Do not say it. But yes—she will be as a sister to me too; she need fear nothing from my hand.”

Sasha bowed his head and said not a word.

“Come then,” said Dmitrii. “I will arm you.”

Mail shirt and cuirass, a shield, a leaf-shaped spear, red at the haft. Good boots, cuisses for his thighs. A pointed helm. It was soon done. Sasha’s fingertips felt cold. “Where is your armor?” he asked Dmitrii. The Grand Prince was dressed as a minor boyar, one of hundreds.

Dmitrii looked cheerful, like a boy caught in mischief. His attendants, the ones Sasha could see, looked simultaneously anxious and exasperated. “I had one of my boyars change places with me,” he said. “Do you think I want to sit on a hill clad in scarlet? No. I will fight properly, and I will not give the Tatar bowmen a better target than I can help.”

“Your cause is defeated if you are slain,” said Sasha.

“My cause is defeated if I am not the leader of this host,” said Dmitrii. “For Rus’ will fracture, if I am not lord. They will be as leaves in defeat, scattering in a strong wind, or they will be overproud in victory, each trying to claim a greater share than the others. No, I will play for the great prize. What else is there?”

“What indeed?” said Sasha. “I have served you as well as God, cousin,” he said. “And been proud to do it. For all I’ve done—or not done—forgive me.”

“Do we talk of forgiveness, brother?” said Dmitrii. “The left hand does not beg forgiveness of the right.” He clapped Sasha on the back. “Go with God.”

Armed, they went out to where the army waited, drawn up on the field of Kulikovo. It was a little before noon by then, and the mist was burning away.

“I must find my sister,” said Sasha. “I did not bid her a proper farewell.”

“There is not time,” said Dmitrii. A man brought his horse, and he swung to the saddle. As the sun broke through the last of the fog, he raised a hand to shade his eyes. “Look, there is their champion now.”

Dmitrii was right. The Tatar champion had appeared and a roar echoed from a hundred thousand throats. Sasha, his heart beating fast, mounted Tuman. The steady mare only pricked her ears at the noise. “Tell her farewell, since I cannot,” he said.

As Sasha rode out onto the great sloshing field before the two hosts, he thought he saw a flash of gold: Pozhar galloping unseen among the host of Rus’. Sasha raised his hand to the glimmer. It was all he could do.

Go with God, little sister.

VASYA MOUNTED POZHAR as soon as her brother left to go to the Grand Prince. The Bear was snuffing the air, pleased, Vasya thought, at the tension. He turned a teeth-baring grin to her. “What now, mistress?”

Morozko had left her just as dawn touched the sky. There was still something of his presence in the cold mist, the few snowflakes just drifting down in the wind that riffled the pennants of the Russian host. She felt caught again between them: the Bear’s joy in battle and Morozko’s grief at destruction. The Bear’s presence and the winter-king’s absence.

Very well; Morozko’s work was with the dead.

Hers was with the living.

But not, just now, with men.

The first one she saw was like a great black bird with the face of a woman. She soared across the battlefield, rippling banners with her wings, and though men could not see her they looked up, as though they felt her shadow upon themselves and upon the day.

The next was the leshy, stepping softly to the border of his forest; the scrubby forest that ringed the battlefield, the forest that currently concealed Vladimir Andreevich and his cavalry, waiting for the right moment to charge.

Vasya nudged Pozhar and the golden mare, streaming sparks, galloped between the ranks of men, the tents, so that Vasya could go have a word with the forest-lord.

“I will keep the men hidden,” said the leshy, when Vasya had clasped his twiggy fingers with her bloody ones, “and bewilder their enemies. For your promises and the Grand Prince’s, Vasilisa Petrovna.”

So it was all across the battlefield. While Sasha armed, and men ate and drew up rank on rank, the chyerti gathered in the thick mist. The vodianoy gurgled in his river; his daughters the rusalki waited on the banks. Some Vasya knew by sight. Many she didn’t. But still they came until the battlefield was teeming, haunted, and she felt the weight of their eyes, and their trust.

The thick mist had begun to burn away. She was already sweating, despite the chill, with nerves and with exertion, riding Pozhar here and there to rally and dispose and encourage her own people in and around Dmitrii’s.

Finally there came a single long blast from a trumpet, and Vasya let her attention return to the world of men. She looked across the great swampy field. Mist still lay in patches between the Tatars and the Russians, but now the Tatars could be seen.

Vasya’s heart sank.

There were so many. What could a little fear do to a mass of men that great? Their line stretched out as far as she could see; the snorting of their horses was like a rumble far away. Clouds massed in the north, heavy with snow, and the occasional flake tumbled down. Dmitrii had his best troops in the van, with Mikhail, the Grand Prince of Tver, on the left flank. Vladimir, the Prince of Serpukhov, was on the right, but concealed in the thick trees.

Somewhere behind Mamai’s line, Oleg and his boyars were waiting, too, waiting for another signal, to fall upon the Tatars from behind.

All around the chyerti waited, flickering like candle-flames in the corner of her eyes.

The Bear, at her side, surveying them, said, “I have lived a long time, but I have never seen such a magic as this, to draw all our people into war as one.” There was a hell-light of anticipation in his eyes.

Vasya made no answer; she only prayed she’d done the right thing. She tried to think what else she could do but couldn’t think of anything.

Pozhar was restive now, barely ridable. Tension lay thick in the air. Here was no concealing darkness; the mist was gone. There was nothing to hide the fact that a hundred thousand men were about to start killing each other. The battle would start soon. Where was Sasha?

The Bear appeared at her side and gave the field a look of joy. “Mud and screaming,” he said. “Chyerti and men fighting together. Oh, it will be glorious.”

“Do you know where my brother is?” said Vasya.

The Bear smiled wolfishly. “There,” he said, and pointed. “But you can’t go to him now.”

“Why not?”

“Because your brother is fighting that Tatar Chelubey in single combat. Didn’t you know?”

She whipped around, horrified. But it was too late, already too late; the armies were drawn up and now two figures appeared from each side, riding toward each other, on a gray horse and a chestnut.

“You knew and waited to tell me,” she said.

“I may serve you,” said the Bear. “I may even enjoy it. But I will never be trustworthy. Besides, rather than talk to me before, you spent the night arguing with my brother who, no matter how blue-eyed, cannot know the army like I do. Your loss.”

Pozhar threw her head up, sensing Vasya’s sudden urgency; she said, “I must go to him,” just as the Bear hurled himself snarling in her way.

“Are you a fool?” he demanded. “Do you think there is no man, out of all of them, with the wit to see you or that golden horse? Can you rely on it, when all eyes will be fixed on your brother? Can you be sure that no Tatar will raise no cry of treachery?” And seeing Vasya staring at him, stone-faced, frozen, he added, “The monk will not thank you. That Tatar tortured him; he is doing it for Dmitrii, for his country, for himself. It is his glory, not yours.”

She turned round, indecisive, agonized.

They were all drawn up, the armies of Rus’ and the armies of Mamai, and shivering in the dawn mist, their mail cold and heavy. Among them were the powers that no one could see. The vodianoy of the Don, waiting to drown the unwary. The leshy of the woods, concealing men in his branches. The grinning king of chaos. The lesser chyerti of wood and water.

And unseen, powerful, aloof, the king of winter. He was in the clouds in the north, the hard, chill wind, the occasional snowflake on her cheek. But he would not come down and stand among them. He would not fight Dmitrii’s war. She had seen the terrible knowledge in his eyes: My task is with the dead.

I could be far from here, Vasya thought, seeing her hands tremble. I could be far away, beside the lake, or at Lesnaya Zemlya, or in a clean forest with no name.

Instead I am here. Oh Sasha, Sasha, what have you done?

ALONE, BROTHER ALEKSANDR RODE onto the swampy field of Kulikovo, rode between the spears of Dmitrii’s vanguard and out into the open space between the two armies. There was no sound but Tuman’s soft snorting breath, and the suck of her hooves in the sodden earth.

A man on a tall red horse rode out to meet him. More than a hundred thousand men on that field, and still it was quiet enough for Sasha to hear the wind rising, sighing as though in sorrow, blowing down the last of the leaves.

“A fair morning,” said Chelubey, sitting easily on his stocky Tatar horse.

“I am going to kill you,” said Sasha.

“I think not,” said Chelubey. “In fact I am sure not. Poor holy man, with the scars on your back and your torn hand.”

“You cheapen this,” said Sasha.

Chelubey’s face was grim now. “What is this to you? A game? A spiritual quest? It is only men against men, and whichever side prevails, there will be women wailing and blood on the earth.”

Without another word, he wheeled his horse around and cantered a few paces away, turned and stood waiting.

Sasha did likewise. Still, all was silent. Strange, in all that gray morning, with men in the ten thousands waiting. Once more he thought he glimpsed a single horse glowing gold in the last of the mist, a slender rider on her back; at her side was a hulking black shadow. He breathed a silent prayer.

Then Sasha raised his spear and shouted, and at his back came a roar from sixty thousand throats. When had the Rus’ last come together? Not since the days of the grand princes of Kiev. But Dmitrii Ivanovich had drawn them together, there on the cold bank of the river Don.

Chelubey shouted in turn, his face bright with joy; the sound of all his people shouting at his back. Tuman stood steady beneath her rider, and at Sasha’s touch she shot forward. Chelubey kicked his powerful chestnut and then they were racing across the marshy ground, mud and water flying from beneath their horses’ hooves.

VASYA WATCHED THEM GALLOP, her heartbeat strangling-fast in her throat. Their horses threw great arcs of mud with each stride. Chelubey’s spear dipped at the last moment, to catch her brother in the breastbone. Sasha’s shield deflected the full force of the blow; his own spear rattled along the scale on Chelubey’s shoulder, and broke.

Vasya put a hand to her mouth. Sasha dropped his broken spear-haft and drew his sword just as Chelubey wheeled his chestnut, icy calm. The Tatar still had both his spear and his shield; he guided his mare with his knees. Sasha’s sword had less than half his reach.

A second pass. This time, at the last instant, Sasha touched Tuman’s side. The quick-footed mare feinted left, and Sasha’s sword came down on Chelubey’s spear-haft. Now they were both armed only with swords, and wheeling their horses once more.

Now it was close-work, striking, feinting, drawing back. Even from a distance, the ringing of their swords came clearly to her ears.

The Bear smiled with pure unfeigned joy, watching.

Chelubey’s chestnut mare was a little quicker than Tuman. Sasha was a little stronger than Chelubey. By now, both men had mud on their faces, dirt and blood on the necks of their horses, and they grunted each time their heavy swords struck.

Vasya’s heart was in her mouth, but she couldn’t help him. Nor would she. This was his moment; his teeth were bared, and in his face was glory. Her palms were bloodied with the impress of her nails.

Fine snow stung her face. Vasya could hear the voices of chyerti rising too, and also the voices of Russians, calling encouragement to her brother.

Sasha parried another thrust and scored a strike along Chelubey’s ribs, tearing away the chain mail. Chelubey blocked a second blow with his sword, and then the two men had their swords pressed hilt to hilt. Sasha did not falter; he heaved with all his strength and threw Chelubey out of the saddle.

The Bear roared when the Tatar fell, and all the men on both sides screamed out. Chelubey and Sasha were grappling in the dirt, swords gone, only their hands and fists now. Then Sasha’s hand, groping, found his dagger.

He buried it to the hilt in Chelubey’s throat.

All around the Russians shouted victory; all of Vasya’s chyerti cried out likewise. Sasha had won.

Vasya let out a shaken breath.

The Bear sighed, as though in the most profound satisfaction.

Sasha stood straight, his bloody sword in his hand. He kissed it and lifted it to heaven, saluting God and Dmitrii Ivanovich.

Vasya thought she heard a single voice, Dmitrii’s voice, calling to his men, “God is on our side! Victory is sure! Ride now! Ride!” And then the Russians were charging, all of them, massed, screaming the name of the Grand Prince of Moscow, and of Aleksandr Peresvet.

Sasha turned, straight-backed, as though to call to his horse and join the charge. But he didn’t call.

The Bear turned to look at Vasya, his eyes eager and intent. And then Vasya saw it, the great rent in Sasha’s leather armor, where a sword-thrust had found its mark, unseen in the melee.

“No!”

Her brother turned his head as though he could hear her. Tuman had come back to him, and he put a hand to the pommel of her saddle, as though to vault to her back.

Instead he fell to his knees.

The Bear laughed. Vasya screamed. She did not know such a sound was in her. She leaned forward; Pozhar shot forward, raced across the open field toward Sasha, outstripping the converging armies. The Bear followed her; faintly she could hear the voices of the chyerti of Rus’, running with the Russians.

But Vasya had stopped thinking of victory. On either side the armies were rushing up, but in the middle of the field there was nothing but Tuman, wild with fright, and Chelubey dead, facedown in the mud and water. Vasya had no thought to spare for either, for her brother was still kneeling in the mud but shaking violently now, the blood spilling from his lips. He looked up. “Vasya,” he said.

“Shh,” she told him. “Don’t talk.”

“I am sorry. I meant to live. I did.”

Pozhar silently knelt in the mud for them. “You’re going to live anyway. Get on the horse,” Vasya said.

She had no notion of how it must have hurt him to obey her. The ground shook from the thunder of two armies. He could not sit upright, but slumped, deadweight.

“He is going to die,” said Medved at her side. “Better to take vengeance.”

Without a word, Vasya gashed her hand on her brother’s sword. Blood poured over her fingers. She smeared it across the Bear’s face, putting all she had of will in it.

“Take vengeance for me,” she said flatly.

The Bear shuddered with strength. His eye blazed up, brighter than Pozhar at midnight. Watching her, he snatched Sasha’s helm off the muddy ground and bit deep into his own hand. Blood poured down, clear as water but acrid with the smell of sulfur, pooling in the cupped bronze.

“I give you my power in exchange,” he said, and his glance was sly. “To make the dead rise.”

Then he was gone, disappearing into the fray, terror his weapon. Vasya, balancing the helmet, got up onto Pozhar behind her brother. The mare, ears pinned, stood up despite her double burden, mud on her legs and belly. Fast as a star she galloped away, while all around them the battle was joined.

35. The Starlit Road

VASYA COULD FEEL EVERY STRIKE of Pozhar’s hooves, as though she were the one mortally wounded. The mare twisted and turned, avoiding armies and chyerti both; once she jumped clean over a dead horse. All the while, Vasya gripped her brother, gripped the helmet with its strange burden. And she prayed.

At last they broke clear of the battle, and left the omnipresent roar behind them, concealing themselves in the trees that lined the river. They found a space of quiet in a little copse. They were not terribly far from the battle; the roaring seemed to shred the earth and sky. Vasya thought she could hear the Bear laughing.

The copse was a little higher than the marsh; Vasya slid from Pozhar’s back just in time to catch her brother as he fell. He almost sent her sprawling into the water. It took all her strength to halt him, and lay him on the soft earth. His lips were blue, his hands cold.

She stared at the water in the helm. Make the dead alive. But he isn’t dead. Morozko—Morozko where are you?

Sasha’s eyes looked up, but they did not see her. Perhaps he saw a road beneath a starry sky: a road from which there is no turning back. “Vasya?” he asked. His voice was little more than a breath now.

She had nothing but her two hands: with her fur cloak she wiped the blood and earth from her brother’s face, held his head in her lap.

“I am here,” she said. Tears unbidden spilled from her eyes. “You have won. The army is sure of its victory.”

His eyes brightened. “I am glad,” he said. “I am—”

He turned his head a little; his stare became fixed. Vasya turned to follow his gaze, and there was the death-god, waiting. He was on foot; his horse a faint shape, pale as mist at his back. She looked at him long, and there were no words between them. Once she had begged, once she had railed at him, for coming to claim those she loved. Now she only looked, and saw her glance go through him like a sword.

“Could you have saved his life?” she whispered.

His answer was the merest shake of his head. But he came, still wordless, and knelt beside her. Frowning, he cupped his hands. Water, clear and clean, gathered in his palms, and he let it trickle out onto her brother’s face. Where the water touched, the cuts, bruises, the grime vanished, as though washed away. Vasya, not speaking either, helped him. They worked slowly and steadily. Vasya pulled aside the stained and broken armor, and Morozko let the water run. In the end, her brother’s face and torso were clean and unmarked; he looked asleep, peaceful, unwounded.

But he did not stir back to life.

She reached for the helmet.

Morozko’s troubled glance followed the movement. Hope was beating in her throat, a fragile, burning thing. “Can this bring him to life in truth?”

Morozko looked reluctant. “Yes,” he said.

Vasya lifted the helmet, tipped it toward her brother’s lips.

Morozko put out a hand to stay her. “Come with me first.”

She did not know what he meant. But when he offered her his hand, she took it; their fingers met, clasped, and she found herself in the place beyond life: the forest with its road, its net of stars.

Her brother was waiting for her there, upright, a little pale, starlight in his eyes. “Sasha,” she said.

“Little sister,” he said. “I didn’t say goodbye, did I?”

She ran forward and embraced him, but he felt icy cold, distant in her arms. Morozko watched them.

“Sasha,” Vasya said eagerly. “I have something that will bring you back. You can live on, come back to us, to Dmitrii.”

Sasha was looking out into the distance, down the star-strewn road as though with longing. Hastily, she said, “This,” holding out the dented helmet. “Drink it,” she said. “And you will live again.”

“But I am dead,” he said.

She shook her head. “You need not be.”

He was backing up. “I have seen the dead return. I will have no part in it.”

“No!” she said. “It is different this way—it is—it is like Ivan, in the fairy tale.”

But her brother was still shaking his head. “This is not a fairy tale, Vasya. I will not risk my immortal soul, returning to life when I have left it.”

She stared at him. His face was quiet, sad, immovable. “Sasha,” she whispered. “Sasha, please. You can live again. You can go back to Sergei, and Dmitrii and Olga. Please.”

“No,” he said. “I—I fought. I yielded my life and I was glad to give it. It is for others to make it matter. My death is Dmitrii’s now—and—and yours. Guard this land. Make it whole.”

She stared at him. She could not believe. Wild thoughts darted through her brain. Perhaps, in the living world, she could force the water between his lips. But then—but then…

It wasn’t her choice. She thought of Olga’s rage when Vasya had decided the same question for her. She remembered Morozko’s words: It is not your choice to make.

Trying to control her voice, she said, “Is this what you want?”

“It is,” said her brother.

“Then—then God be with you,” said Vasya, her voice breaking. “If—if you see Father and—and Mother—tell them I love them. That I have wandered far, but not forgotten. I—I will pray for you.”

“And I for you,” said her brother, and smiled suddenly. “I will see you again, little sister.”

She nodded but could not speak. She knew her face was crumbling. But she embraced her brother; she stepped back.

And then Morozko spoke softly, but his words were not for her. “Come with me,” he said to Sasha. “Do not be afraid.”

36. The Army of Three

SHE TUMBLED BACK TO HERSELF, bowed over her brother’s unmarked body, sobbing. She did not know how long she wept, while the battle raged nearby. It was a soft hoofbeat that drew her back, and a cold presence behind her.

She turned her head to see the winter-king. He slid from the back of his horse and looked at her.

She had no words for him. Gentle speech or a soft touch would have shattered her, but he offered neither. Vasya shut her brother’s eyes, whispered a prayer over his head. Then she got to her feet, soul full of restless violence. She could not bring her brother back. But the thing he had wanted—the thing he had worked for—that she could do.

“Only for the dead, Morozko?” she said. She reached out a hand, still smeared with her brother’s blood and her own, from where she’d cut it for the Bear.

He hesitated.

But in his face was an echoing savagery; he looked suddenly like he had on a Midwinter midnight: proud, young, dangerous. There were traces of Sasha’s blood on his hands too.

“And for the living, beloved,” he said, low. “They are my people too.”

He caught her bloody hand in his and all around the wind shrieked; the cry of the first snowstorm. Her soul was all restless fire, and when she looked up at Pozhar, the golden mare was drawn equally taut; she pawed the ground once. They mounted their horses together, and wheeled and galloped back to the battle, on the breast of a newborn storm.

Flames in her hands; in his grip was the power of bitterest winter.

A shout came from the field, as the Bear, laughing, caught sight of them.

“We must find Dmitrii,” called Vasya, shouting over the noise, as she sent Pozhar hurtling through a knot of Tatar warriors who were galloping down a group of Russian pikemen. The beasts scattered with sudden fright, spoiling their swearing riders’ aim.

A swift wind leaped up and blew wide an arrow that would have struck her, and Morozko said, “There is his standard.”

It was at the apex of a small rise, in the first line of battle; they turned thither, cutting a swath through fighting men as they did. The snow was falling thicker and thicker now. A hail of arrows was targeting Dmitrii’s position. A wedge of horsemen was pushing through, trying to get to that vulnerable banner.

The white mare and Pozhar, light on their feet, cut through the battle faster, but the Tatars were closer and it was a race between them. Ears flat to her head, Pozhar dodged and sprang and galloped, while Vasya shouted at the Tatars’ horses. A few heard her and faltered, but not enough. The ground under the enemy’s feet grew slippery with ice, but the Tatars’ horses were sturdy beasts, used to running on all surfaces, and even that didn’t sway them. Snow blew in their faces, blinding the riders, but still the skillfully timed arrows flew.

“Medved!” Vasya shouted.

The Bear appeared on her other side, still with that edge of shrieking laughter in his voice. “Such joy,” he crowed. He was a beast, bathed in men’s blood and howling with delight, stark contrast to Morozko’s gathered silence on her other side. Together the three of them made a wedge of their own, and bulled through the fighting. Vasya set fires at their feet, swiftly smothered by the wet field, the fast-falling snow. Morozko blinded them, turned their arrows with a pranking wind.

Medved simply terrified all in his path.

It was a race between them and the Tatars to see who could get to Dmitrii’s position first.

The Tatars won. Arrows flying, they slammed into Dmitrii’s standard like a wave, a few strides before Vasya and her allies. The standard fell, crumpled to mud; all around were shouts of triumph. Still those arrows fell, deadly accurate. The white mare was hanging close to Pozhar’s flank; most of Morozko’s efforts were spent to keep arrows from Vasya and the two horses.

Dmitrii’s guard was smashed apart; his horse reared and went over. Then three Tatars were on him, hacking.

Vasya shouted, and Pozhar slammed into them with brute force. Who needed a sword, riding the golden mare? Her hooves shattered them, drove off their horses; sudden fires leaped up at their feet and they were flung back. Vasya slid down the mare’s shoulder and knelt at the Grand Prince’s head.

His armor was hacked; he was bleeding from a dozen wounds. She pulled off his helmet.

But it wasn’t the Grand Prince of Moscow at all. It was a young man she didn’t know, dying.

She stared. “Where is the Grand Prince?” she whispered.

The young man could hardly speak; blood bubbled between his lips. He looked up at her with unseeing eyes. She had to bend near to catch the words. “The van,” he whispered. “The first line of battle. He gave me his armor, so the Tatars would not know him. I was honored. I was…”

The light faded from his eyes.

Vasya closed them, turned.

“The line of battle,” she said. “Go!”

TATARS EVERYWHERE, FIGHTING. Arrows flying from all sides. Morozko was riding knee to knee with Vasya, keeping arrows from her with grim tenacity. With the Bear they cut through battles when they could, bringing snow, fire, terror.

“The line is wavering,” put in the Bear conversationally. His eye still glittered, his fur spiked with blood. “Dmitrii is going to have to—”

Then she heard Dmitrii’s voice. Undimmed, hale, roaring out over all the clash of armies. “Fall back!” he cried.

“That is not ideal,” said the Bear.

“Where is he?” said Vasya. She could hardly see through the snow and the thrash of fighting men.

“There,” said Morozko.

Vasya looked. “I can’t see.”

“Come on then,” said the winter-king. Shoulder to shoulder they fought their way through the press. Now she could see Dmitrii, still mounted, dressed in the armor of an ordinary boyar, his sword in his hand. Whooping, he ran a man through, used his horse’s weight to boost another man out of his saddle. There was blood on his cheek, his arm, his saddle, and the neck of his horse. “Fall back!”

The Tatars were advancing. All around, the arrows flew. One grazed her arm; she barely felt it. “Vasya!” snapped Morozko, and she realized her upper arm was bleeding.

“The Grand Prince has to live,” said Vasya. “All this is for naught if he dies—”

And then Pozhar was level with Dmitrii’s horse, rearing, forcing another attacker back.

Dmitrii turned and saw her. His face changed. He leaned over and seized her arm, heedless of her wounds or his.

“Sasha,” he said. “Where is Sasha?”

Battle had numbed her, but at his words, the fog around her mind thinned a little—and beneath it was agony. Dmitrii saw it in her face. His own whitened. His lips firmed. Without another word to Vasya, he turned to his men again. “Fall back! Join the second line, bring them up.”

It wasn’t orderly. The Russians were breaking, fleeing, hiding themselves in the second line of battle, which was wavering badly. Now the Bear was nowhere to be seen, and—

Dmitrii said, turning back on her suddenly, “If Oleg was planning to take a hand, now is a good time.”

“I’ll go find him,” said Vasya. To Morozko, she said, “Don’t let him die.”

Morozko looked as though he wanted to swear at her; there was mud on his face too, and blood. A long scratch marred the neck of his mare. He wasn’t the aloof winter-king now. But he only nodded, turned his horse to keep up with Dmitrii.

Dmitrii said, “If Oleg hasn’t betrayed us, tell him to fall in on Mamai’s right flank,” and then he whirled away calling more orders.

Vasya turned Pozhar, trying to sink once more into invisibility, cutting through the advancing Tatar line in search of Oleg.

SHE FOUND THE MEN of Ryazan fresh, waiting on a small rise, watching.

“This,” said Vasya, riding up to him, “is not generally what is meant when you take an oath to a Grand Prince that you are going to fight.”

Oleg just smiled at her. “When one is risking everything on a hammer-stroke, one waits until the stroke does the most good.” He looked over the field. “That time is now. Ride down with me, witch-girl?”

“Hurry,” said Vasya.

He called an order; Vasya wheeled Pozhar. The mare was glowing coal-hot, but Vasya couldn’t feel it.

The men of Ryazan, shouting, raced down the rise at full stretch. Horns were blowing. Vasya fell in beside Oleg’s stirrup, going to a little trouble to hold Pozhar to the pace of the racing horses. She saw the Tatars turning in shock, to meet an attack on an unexpected quarter, and then she saw another movement from the woods on Dmitrii’s left flank—Vladimir’s cavalry coming out of the forest at last, and the Bear among them, driving their horses on with the speed of terror. She could hear his whooping laughter.

And so they caught the Tatars between them—Oleg, Vladimir, and Dmitrii—and smashed the line to pieces.

BUT STILL IT HAD to be fought out, hour by bloody hour, and she did not know how long it had been—hours? days?—when at last a voice brought her back to herself. “Vasya,” Morozko said. “It is over. They are fleeing.”

It seemed a haze fell from her sight. She looked around and realized that they had met in the middle: Oleg, Vladimir, and Dmitrii, and also she, the Bear, and Morozko.

Dmitrii was half-fainting from his wounds; Vladimir supported him. Oleg looked triumphant. All around she saw only their own men. They had won.

The wind had dropped; the early snow fell steadily now. Lightly, silently, thickly, it covered dead enemies and dead friends alike.

Vasya just stared at Morozko, stupid with shock and weariness. A thin curtain of blood ran down from a scratch in the white mare’s neck. He looked as weary as she, and as sad, dirt and blood on his hands. Only Pozhar was unwounded: still as sleekly powerful as she’d been that morning.

Vasya only wished she could say the same. Her arrow-grazed arm throbbed, and that wasn’t even close to the pain in her soul.

Dmitrii had forced himself upright, deathly pale, and was walking over to her. She slid down Pozhar’s shoulder and went to meet him.

“You have won,” she said. There was no emotion in her voice.

“Where is Sasha?” said the Grand Prince of Moscow.

37. Water of Death, Water of Life

DMITRII’S MEN CHASED THEIR FOES all the way back to Mecia—nearly fifty versts. Vladimir Andreevich, Oleg of Ryazan, and Mikhail of Tver led the rout, the princes riding side by side like brothers, and their men mingling like water, so that the eye could no longer tell who was from Moscow or Ryazan or Tver, for they were all Russians. They took the herds of Mamai’s train and killed the puppet-khan he’d brought; they sent the general himself fleeing to Caffa, not daring to go back to Sarai, where his life would be forfeit.

But neither the Grand Prince of Moscow nor Vasya took part in the rout. Instead, Dmitrii followed Vasya to a little sheltered copse not far from the river.

Sasha lay where they’d left him, wrapped in Vasya’s fur cloak, his flesh clean, inviolate.

Dmitrii half-fell, stumbling from his horse, and caught his dearest friend’s body in his arms. He did not speak.

Vasya had no comfort for him; she was weeping too.

A long silence fell in that copse, as the long day ended, and the light grew smoky and insubstantial. Snow still fell, softly, all around.

Finally, Dmitrii raised his head. “He should be taken back to the Lavra,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “To be buried with his fellows, in consecrated ground.”

“Sergei will say prayers for his soul,” said Vasya. Her voice was as rough as his, with shouting and with weeping. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “He wandered the whole of this land,” she said. “He knew it and he loved it. And now he will be bone, trapped in frozen earth.”

“But there will be songs,” said Dmitrii. “I swear it. He will not be forgotten.”

Vasya said nothing at all. She had no words. What did songs matter? They would not bring her brother back.

It was night when the cart came to take her brother’s body away. It came rumbling out of the dark, accompanied by a spill of noise and light, and Dmitrii’s noisy attendants, all full of triumph, barely leavened by respect for the occasion. Vasya could not stand their noise, or their joy, and anyway, Sasha was gone.

She kissed her brother’s forehead, and rose, and slipped away into the dark.

SHE DID NOT KNOW when Morozko and Medved appeared. She had the sense that she’d been walking alone a long time, with no notion of where she was or where she was going. She just wanted to get away from the noise and stink, the gore and the grief, the wild triumph.

But at some point, she raised her head and found them walking beside her.

The two brothers she had met in a clearing as a child, the two that had marked her life and changed it. They were both daubed with blood, the Bear’s eyes alight with the remnants of battle-lust, Morozko grave, his face unreadable. The enmity between them was still there, but changed, somehow, transmuted.

It’s because they aren’t on opposite sides anymore, she thought, dim with exhausted grief. God help me, they are both mine.

Morozko spoke first, not to Vasya but to his brother.

“You still owe me a life,” he said.

The Bear snorted. “I have tried to pay it. I offered her hers, I offered her brother his. Is it my fault that men and women are fools?”

“Perhaps not,” said Morozko. “But you still owe me a life.”

The Bear looked surly. “Very well,” he said. “What life?”

Morozko turned to Vasya, looked a question. She only stared at him blankly. What life? Her brother was gone and the field was thick with dead. Whose life could she desire, now?

Morozko reached very carefully into his sleeve, drew out something wrapped in embroidered cloth. He unwrapped it, held it out with both hands to Vasya.

In was a dead nightingale, its body stiff and perfect, kept inviolate with the water of life. It looked like the carved one she had kept with her through all the long nights and hard days.

She stared from the bird to the winter-king, beyond speech. “Is it possible?” she whispered. Her throat was dust-dry.

“Perhaps,” said Morozko, and turned back to his brother.

SHE COULD NOT BEAR to watch. She could not bear to listen. She walked away from them, almost afraid of her hope, coming so soon after grief. She could not bear to see them succeed and she could not bear to see them fail.

Even when hoofbeats came softly up behind her, she didn’t turn. Not until a soft nose came down, lightly, on her cheek.

She turned her head.

And stared and stared and she could not believe. She couldn’t move; she couldn’t speak. It was as though speech or movement would break the illusion, shatter it and leave her desolate once more. She drank in the sight; his bay coat black in the darkness, the single star on his face, his warm dark eye. She knew him. She loved him. “Solovey,” she whispered.

I was asleep, said the horse. But those two, the Bear and the winter-king, they woke me up. I missed you.

Her heart torn with exhaustion and shocked joy, Vasya threw her arms around the bay stallion’s neck, and she wept. He was no ghost. He was warm, alive, smelling of himself, and the texture of his mane was agonizingly familiar against her cheek.

I will not leave you again, said the stallion, and put his head around to nuzzle her.

“I missed you so,” she said to the horse, hot tears sliding into his black mane.

I am sure of it, said Solovey, nosing her. He shook his mane, looking superior. But I am here now. You are the warden of the lake now? It has not had a mistress for a long time. I am glad it is you. But you should have had me. You would have done it all a great deal better if I’d been there.

“I am sure of it,” said Vasya, and she made a broken sound that was almost a laugh.

FINGERS TANGLED IN HER horse’s mane, leaning on his broad, warm shoulder, she barely heard the Bear speak. “Well, this is all touching. But I am off. I have a world to see and her promise for my freedom, brother.” This last was added warily to Morozko. Vasya saw, when she opened her eyes, that the winter-king was eyeing his twin with undimmed suspicion.

“You are still bound to me,” said Vasya to the Bear. “And to your promise. The dead will not rise.”

“Men create enough chaos without me,” said the Bear. “I am just going to enjoy it. Perhaps give a few men nightmares.”

“If you do worse,” said Vasya, “the chyerti will tell me.” She raised her golden wrists, a threat and a promise.

“I will not do worse.”

“I will call you again,” she said. “If there is need.”

“So you will,” he said. “I may even answer.” He bowed. And then he was gone, swiftly lost in the gloom.

THE BATTLEFIELD WAS EMPTY. The moon had risen, somewhere behind the clouds. The field was stiff with frost. The dead lay open-eyed, men and horses, and the living moved among them by torchlight, looking for dead friends, or stealing what they could.

Vasya looked away.

The chyerti had already slipped away, back to their forests and streams, holding Dmitrii’s promise, and Sergei’s, and Vasya’s.

We can share this land. This land that we have kept.

Three chyerti remained. One was Morozko, standing silent. The second was a woman, whose dawn-pale hair slanted across the darkness of her skin. The third was a little mushroom-spirit, who glowed a sickly green in the darkness.

Vasya bowed to Ded Grib and Polunochnitsa, straight-shouldered and solemn, though she knew her face was swollen and blotched like a child’s with grief and with painful joy. “My friends,” she said. “You came back.”

“You had your victory, lady,” returned Midnight. “We are witnesses. You made your promises and you kept them. We are yours in truth, the chyerti. I came to tell you that the old woman—she is glad.”

Vasya could only nod. What care had she for promises, either kept or broken? The price had been too high. But then she licked her lips and said, “Tell—tell my great-grandmother that I will come to her, in Midnight, if she will permit. For I have much to learn. And thank you. Both of you. For your faith. And your lessons.”

“Not tonight,” put in Ded Grib, in his high voice, practically. “You aren’t learning anything tonight. Go and find somewhere clean.” He fixed Morozko with a dark look. “Surely you know a good place, winter-king. Even if your realm is too cold for mushrooms.”

“I know a place,” said Morozko.

“I will see you beside the lake, in the moonlight,” said Vasya to Ded Grib and Polunochnitsa.

“We will wait for you there,” said Midnight, and then she and Ded Grib were gone as suddenly as they’d appeared.

Vasya leaned against Solovey’s shoulder and the grief and the joy bewildered her equally. Morozko cupped his hands. “Let us go,” he said. “At last.”

Without a word, she put a foot in his hands and let him boost her onto Solovey’s back. She did not know where they were going, save that it was the direction her soul told her was away. Away from the sound and the smell, the glory and the futility.

Solovey carried her gently, neck arched, and Pozhar, glowing in the darkness, shed heat upon them both.

Finally they crested a small rise. The whole blood-drenched battlefield lay clear at their feet. Vasya dismounted and went to Pozhar.

“Thank you, lady,” she said. “Will you fly free now, as you have long wished to do?”

Pozhar lifted her head, aloof, and her nostrils flared, as if to test the winds of heaven. But then she bent her golden head, delicately, and lipped Vasya’s hair. I will be at the lake when you return, she said. You may prepare a warm place for me on stormy nights, and comb my mane.

Vasya smiled. “It will be done,” she said.

Pozhar slanted her ears back a fraction. Do not neglect the lake. For it will always need a guardian.

“I will guard it,” said Vasya. “And I will watch over my family. And I will ride the world, in between times, through the farthest countries of dark and day. It is enough for one life.” She paused. “Thank you,” she added to the mare. “More than I can say.”

Then she stepped back.

The mare threw her head up, small flames licking at the edge of her mane. One ear slanted toward Solovey, perhaps with a touch of coquetry. He rumbled softly at her. Then the mare reared—up and up. Her wings flared, brighter than the pale morning sun, gilding all the snowflakes, making shadows of the whirling snow. Then the firebird soared aloft in a rush of glory. Men who watched from afar later told each other that they had seen a comet, a sign of God’s blessing, flying between heaven and earth.

Vasya watched Pozhar go, eyes fixed on the brightness, and only looked down when Solovey nudged her in the small of her back. She buried her face in her horse’s mane, breathed the reassuring smell of him. He had none of Pozhar’s alarming tang of smoke. She could even, for an instant, forget the smell of blood and filth, fire and iron.

A coolness at her back, and she lifted her head and turned.

Morozko had dirt under his nails, a streak of soot on his cheek. The white mare behind him looked as weary as he, her proud head hanging low. She nuzzled Solovey, her colt, once, lightly.

Morozko looked weary, as men are weary, at the end of long labor. His eyes searched her face.

She took his hands in hers. “Will it be thus for you,” she asked him, “so long as you live? To stand beside us, and to grieve for us?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps. But—I think that I would rather feel pain than not feel anything at all. Perhaps I am grown mortal, after all.”

His tone was wry, but then his arm closed around her tightly, and she put her arms around his neck and pressed her face to his shoulder. He smelled of earth and blood and fear, of that day’s slaughter. But beneath, as always, were the scents of cold water and of pine.

She tilted her head up and pulled him down to her and kissed him fiercely, as though at last she could lose herself, forget duty and that day’s horror in the touch of his hands.

“Vasya,” he said, low, in her ear. “It is almost midnight. Where do you wish to go?” His hand was in the snarls of her hair.

“Somewhere with clean water,” she said. “I am sick to death of blood. And then? North. To tell Olya how…” She trailed off, had to steady her voice before she continued. “Perhaps—after—we may ride to the sea together, and see the light on the water.”

“Yes,” he said.

She almost smiled. “And then? Well, you have a realm in the winter forest, and I have mine, on the bow-curve of a lake. Perhaps we might forge one country in secret, a country of shadows, behind and beneath Dmitrii’s Russia. For there must always be a land for chyerti, for witches and for sorcerers, and for followers of the forest.”

“Yes,” he said again. “But for tonight, food and cool air, clean water and untainted earth. Come with me, Snegurochka. I know a house in a winter forest.”

“I know,” she said, and a thumb brushed away her tears.

She would have said she was too tired to vault to Solovey’s back, but her body did it despite her.

“What did we gain?” Vasya asked Morozko as they rode away. The snow had stopped, the sky shone clear. The season of frost had barely begun.

“A future,” returned the frost-demon. “For men will say in later years that this was the battle that made Rus’ a nation of one people. And chyerti will live on, unfaded.”

“Even for that, the price was very high,” she said.

They were riding knee to knee; he made no answer. The wild darkness of Midnight was all about them now. But somewhere ahead, a light shone through the trees.