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.
