“We must see to the horses first,” said Sasha practically—he glanced at his Tuman, who stood still in the snow, spent—“and take counsel amongst ourselves.”

THE REFECTORY WAS LOW AND DIM, as all buildings were in that frost-haunted land, but unlike most of the monastery it had a stove and a good fire. Sasha sighed when the heat touched his weary limbs.

Dmitrii also sighed, unhappily, when he saw the meal laid out. He would have liked some fat meat, roasted slowly in a hot oven. But Sergius observed fast-days strictly.

“Best we strengthen the walls first,” said Sasha, pushing aside his second bowl of cabbage soup, “before we go out searching.”

Dmitrii was eating bread and dried cherries, having rather resentfully finished his soup. He grunted, “They’ll not attack us here. Monasteries are sacred.”

“Perhaps,” said Sasha, whose long journey to Sarai was fresh in his mind. “But Tatars pray to a different god. In any case, these, I think, are godless men.”

Dmitrii swallowed a mouthful, then returned practically, “So? This monastery has good walls. Bandits steal what they can, they do not attempt winter sieges.” But then he looked doubtful. Dmitrii loved the Lavra, in his shallow, brave heart, and he had not forgotten the smell of the burnt villages.

“It will be dark soon,” the Grand Prince said. “Let us go to the wall now.”

The walls of the Lavra had been built, with much slow labor, of a double thickness of oak. Not much beyond a siege-engine could reduce them. But the gate could be reinforced. Dmitrii gave the orders for it, and also had his men set to thawing and digging great baskets of earth, to be kept warm and close to hand, in case they were needed for smothering fire.

“Well, we have done what we can,” the Grand Prince said at nightfall. “Tomorrow we will send out scouting-parties.”

BUT THERE WERE, in the end, no scouting-parties. It snowed all night, and the next day dawned gray and perilous. Just at first light, a bay stallion with an enormous, misshapen rider on its back came galloping out of the forest.

“The monastery! The gate! Let us in! They are coming!” cried the rider. The cloak fell away, and the misshapen thing was revealed to be not one rider but four—three small girls and a lad a little older.

Brother Rodion was on watch again, peering over the top of the wall. “Who are you?” he called down to the boy.

“Never mind that now!” the boy cried. “I went into their camp and brought these away”—a gesture indicated the girl-children. “Now the bandits are behind me in a boiling fury; if you will not let me in, at least take these girls. Or are you not men of God?”

Dmitrii heard this exchange. Instantly he ran up the ladder to look over the wall. The rider had a fresh, young face, big-eyed, beardless. No warrior, certainly. He spoke in the rough round words of a country lad. The little girls clung to him, half frozen and dazed with fear.

“Let them in,” the prince said.

The bay horse skidded to a halt just inside the gate, and the monks at once urged the groaning hinges shut. The rider handed the girls down and then slid off his horse’s shoulder himself. “The children are cold,” he said. “They are frightened. They must be taken to the bathhouse at once—or the oven. They must be fed.”

But the girls clung to their rescuer’s cloak when two of the village women came up to lead them away. Sasha strode forward. The clamor had drawn him from the chapel and he had heard the last of the exchange from the wall-top. “Have you seen these bandits?” he demanded. “Where are they?”

The rider fastened green eyes onto his face and froze. Sasha stopped as though he’d walked into a tree.

The last time he had seen that face, it had been eight years ago. But although the bones had grown bolder since then—the mouth full-lipped—nonetheless Sasha recognized her.

Had he stumbled onto a wood-sprite, he could not have been more astonished. The rider was staring at him, openmouthed. Then his—her—face lit. “Sasha!” she cried.

At the same time, he said, “Christ, Vasya, what are you doing here?”

6.

The Ends of the Earth

Some weeks earlier, a girl sat on a bay horse at the edge of a fir-grove. Snow slanted down, catching in her eyelashes and the horse’s mane. In the fir-grove stood a house, with an open doorway.

The figure of a man waited in the gap. The firelight behind emptied the man’s eyes and filled his face with shadows.

“Come in, Vasya,” he said. “It is cold.” Could the snow-laden night speak, it might have spoken with that voice.

The girl drew breath to reply, but the stallion had already started forward. Deeper in the fir-grove, the branches twined too thick for the girl to ride. Stiffly, she slid to the ground, and staggered as pain shot through her half-frozen feet. Only a fierce effort, clinging to the horse’s mane, kept her from falling. “Mother of God,” she muttered.

She tripped over a root, lurched to the threshold, stumbled again, and would have fallen, but the man in the doorway caught her. Close in, his eyes were no longer black, but the palest of blues: ice on a clear day. “Fool,” he said after a pause, holding her upright. “Thrice a fool, Vasilisa Petrovna. But come in.” He set her on her feet.

Vasilisa—Vasya—opened her mouth, once more thought better of it, and stepped across the threshold, swaying like a foal.

The house resembled a stand of fir-trees that had decided to become a house for the night but gone about it badly. A livid darkness, as of clouds and fitful moonlight, filled the space near the rafters. The shadows of branches swooped back and forth across the floor, though the walls seemed solid enough.

But one thing was certain: the far end of the house held a vast Russian oven. Vasya stumbled toward it like a blind girl, stripped off her mittens, put her hands near the blaze, and shuddered at the heat on her cold fingers. Beside the oven stood a tall white mare, licking at some salt. This mare nuzzled Vasya briefly in greeting. Vasya, smiling, laid her cheek against the mare’s nose.

Vasilisa Petrovna was no beauty as her people counted it. Too tall, the women had said when she came of age. Far too tall. As for a figure, she has scarce more than a boy.

Mouth like a frog, her stepmother had added, with spite. What man would take a girl with that chin? And as for her eyes—

In truth, the stepmother could not find words for Vasya’s eyes—green and deep and set far apart—nor for her long black plait that strong sunlight would spark with red.

“No beauty, perhaps,” echoed Vasya’s nurse, who had loved her very much. “No beauty, my girl—but she draws the eye. Like her grandmother.” The old lady always crossed herself when she said it, for Vasya’s grandmother had not died happily.

Vasya’s stallion plowed his way into the house behind her and looked about with a proprietary air. The hours in the frozen forest had not quenched him. He went at once to the girl by the oven. The white mare, his dam, snorted softly at him.

Vasya smiled, scratching the stallion’s withers. He wore neither saddle nor bridle. “That was bravely done,” she murmured. “I wasn’t sure we’d ever find it.”

Tags: Katherine Arden Winternight Trilogy Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net