The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

An arrow whistled past her head and thudded into the post beside her. Vasya jerked in startled reflex. One of the horrors stretched out a clawing hand toward her, grinning, its eyes blind. Solovey lashed out with his forefeet, and the thing fell back.

Chelubey’s deep voice called again. The rain of arrows grew fiercer. Dmitrii’s men could not rally against this new threat; they were fighting ghosts. In a moment the Russians would be cut down, one by one.

Then Sasha’s voice rang out, clearly, calmly. “People of God,” he said, “do not be afraid.”

SASHA HAD LEFT HIS SISTER at the postern-gate and gone running up the stairs into the melee of the palace, following the Grand Prince’s voice, the screams and the crashing. Below him, dogs barked and horses squealed. The palace’s front gate was taking a steady battering; Kasyan’s men and Chelubey’s Tatars howled to rouse the dead. The attackers’ chance for secrecy was gone; now their only hope lay in swiftness and in sowing chaos and fear. How many men had crept in through the postern-gate before Vasya gave the alarm?

The musty reek of old bearskin warned him, and then a sword came at Sasha’s head out of the near-dark of the staircase. He blocked it with a teeth-grinding jar and a shower of sparks. One of Kasyan’s men. Sasha did not try to engage him, only ducked the second stroke, dodged past the man, booted him down the stairs, and kept running.

A door stood ajar; he darted into the first anteroom. No one. Only attendants lying dead, guards with their throats slit.

Higher in the palace, Sasha thought he heard Dmitrii cry out. The light from the dooryard glowed suddenly bright in the slitted windows. Sasha ran on, praying incoherently.

Here was the receiving-room, silent and still, except that the door behind the throne stood ajar and from behind it came the crash of blades and a yellow flicker of firelight.

Sasha ran through. Dmitrii Ivanovich was there, unaided except for a single living guard. Four men with curving swords opposed them. Three attendants, who had been unarmed, and four more guards, whose weapons had not done enough, lay dead on the floor.

As Sasha watched, the Grand Prince’s last guard went down with a sword-hilt to the face. Dmitrii killed the attacker and backed up, teeth bared.

The eyes of the prince and the monk met for the briefest instant.

Then Sasha threw his sword. It went end over end and clean through the leather-armored back of one of the invaders. Dmitrii blocked the stroke of the second man, riposted with his sword in a flat arc that took his opponent’s head off.

Sasha ran forward, scooping up a dead man’s blade, and then it was hot, close battle, two against two, until eventually the interlopers fell, spitting blood.

A sudden, heaving silence.

The cousins looked at each other.

“Whose are they?” Dmitrii asked, with a look at the dead men.

“Kasyan’s,” said Sasha.

“I thought I recognized this one,” said Dmitrii, prodding one with the flat of his sword. There was blood on his nose and knuckles; his barrel chest heaved for air. Shouting came up from the guardrooms below; a greater shouting from the dooryard outside. Then a rending crash.

“Dmitrii Ivanovich,” said Sasha. “I beg you will forgive me.”

He wondered if the Grand Prince would kill him here in the shadows.

“Why did you lie to me?” asked Dmitrii.

“For my sister’s virtue,” said Sasha. “And then for her courage.”

Dmitrii held his serpent-headed sword, naked and bloody, in one broad hand. “Will you ever lie to me again?” he asked.

“No,” said Sasha. “I swear it.”

Dmitrii sighed, as though a bitter burden had fallen away. “Then I forgive you.”

Another crash from the dooryard, screams, and a sudden flaring of firelight. “What is happening?” Dmitrii asked.

“Kasyan Lutovich means to make himself Grand Prince,” said Sasha.

Dmitrii smiled at that, slow and grim. “Then I will kill him,” he said very simply. “Come with me, cousin.”

Sasha nodded, and the two went down to the battle below.

VASYA WRENCHED ROUND. Her brother stood at the top of the staircase, on the landing where it split to go up either to the terem or to the audience-chambers. The screen on the steps had been torn away. Next moment the Grand Prince of Moscow, nose and knuckles bleeding, came out of the darkness above, alive, on his feet, holding a bloody sword. For an instant, Dmitrii looked at Sasha, his face full of love and unforgotten anger. Then he raised his voice and stood shoulder to shoulder with his cousin. “Rise, men of God!” he shouted. “Fear nothing!”

The battle paused for a moment, as though the world listened. Then Dmitrii and Sasha, as one, rushed, shouting down the steps. They ran past Vasya, not sparing her a glance, and then out into the dooryard.

And their cry was answered. For Brother Rodion strode now through the ruins of the main gate, his ax in his hand, and he was not alone. Behind and beside him ranged a motley collection of monks and townsmen and warriors—the kremlin gate-guard.

Rodion’s newcomers recoiled when he entered the dooryard. The dead things gibbered and began to advance toward the new threat. Chelubey knew his work; he split his force smoothly to counter Dmitrii and Sasha on the one side, Rodion on the other. The battle wavered on a knife-edge.

Sasha was still shoulder to shoulder with Dmitrii, and the gray eyes of each were violet with strange fire.

“Do not be afraid,” Sasha called again. He stabbed one man, dodged the stroke of another. “People of God, do not be afraid.”

Chelubey looked annoyed now, snapping quick orders. Bows came to bear on the Grand Prince. The Russian men-at-arms blinked like men wakened from nightmares. Dmitrii beheaded one of Kasyan’s men, kicked the body down, and called, “What are devils to men of faith?”

Chelubey coolly set an arrow to his string, sighting on Dmitrii. But Sasha thrust the Grand Prince aside and took the arrow in the meat of his upper arm. He grunted; Vasya cried out in protest.

Dmitrii caught his cousin. The broad-headed arrow had pierced the monk’s upper arm. The men wavered again. The red light strengthened. More arrows flew. One stirred the Grand Prince’s cap. But Sasha shook Dmitrii off and forced himself to his feet, his face set against the pain. He yanked the shaft out, switched his sword to his shield-hand. “Rise, men of God!”

Rodion roared out a war-cry, swinging his ax. Some of the men seized the loose horses and leaped to their backs, and the battle was furiously, finally, joined.

“Solovey,” said Vasya. “I must go up into the tower. I must go after Masha and Kasyan. Go—I beg you will help my brother. Protect him. Protect Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

Solovey flattened his ears. You cannot just—

But she had already put a hand on the stallion’s nose and then raced up into the darkness.

BEFORE HER ROSE THE ENCLOSED STAIRS that would take her into the upper reaches of the Grand Prince’s palace, with the fine screen-work all gashed and broken. Vasya paused on the landing where the staircase split, where Sasha had called down. She looked back. Dmitrii was riding one of the horses from the burning stable. Her brother had sprung to Solovey’s reluctant back: man of God riding a horse of the older, pagan world.