The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

Sasha raised exhausted eyes to her face. He was missing two fingernails on his right hand. “Vasya,” he said. “Get out.”

“I will. With you,” she said. She had the knife from Oleg’s saddle; now with a single slash, she cut his bonds. “Come on.”

But Sasha was shaking his head dazedly. “They know,” he said. “That you stirred up the horses. Chelubey—said something about a bay stallion, and a mare in Moscow. He knew it was you, as soon as the noise started. They—they planned for it.” Sweat had run down into his beard; it gleamed at his temples, on his bare tonsured head. She whipped round.

They were standing in the opening of the tent: Mamai and Chelubey, watching, with men crowding behind them. Chelubey said something in his own tongue and Mamai answered. There was something avid in their stares.

Vasya, not taking her eyes off the two men, reached down to help her brother to his feet. He rose when she pulled, but it was obvious that every movement was agony.

“Step away from him. Slowly,” said Chelubey to her in Russian. She could see her slow death in his eyes.

Vasya had had enough. She wasn’t dazed with a blow to the head now. She set the tent on fire.

Flames leaped from the tent flaps in a dozen places; both men sprang backward, with cries of alarm. Vasya seized her brother and pulled him, limping, to the other side of the tent, used the knife to slice through the felt.

Rather than go out, she waited, holding her breath against the smoke, and whistled once between her teeth. The good bay mare came, and even knelt when Vasya asked, despite smoke and gathering flame, so that Sasha could get onto her back.

He couldn’t stay on the horse by himself. Vasya had to get up in front of him, pull his arms about her waist. “Hold on,” she said. The mare bolted, just as a shout went up from behind. She risked a glance back. Chelubey had seized a horse, just as she broke out of the smoke. Half a dozen men had joined him; they were riding her down. It was a race, to see if midnight would come or her pursuers catch her first.

At first, she thought it was one she could win. Her bones told her that midnight was not far off, and the mare had a good turn of speed.

But the camp was crowded and churning; unable to bull their way straight through, they had to dodge and turn. Sasha was holding on to her for all he was worth, his breath leaving him in a silent wheeze of pain with each fall of the horse’s hooves. The plucky little mare was already beginning to labor under the weight of two.

Vasya breathed, and allowed the whole memory of the night of the burning in Moscow to come back to her. The terror and the power. Reality twisted, just as every campfire in the Tatar army sprang up into a triumphant column of flames.

Dizzy, struggling to keep a grip on herself, Vasya risked another look back, trying to see around her brother. Most of the men pursuing them had sheared off, their horses panicking. But a few had kept control of their horses, and Chelubey had not faltered. Her mare’s sprint was beginning to fade. No sign of Midnight.

Chelubey shouted at his horse. Now he was level with their bay mare’s flank. He had a sword in one hand. Vasya touched the mare and she sheared off, ears laid back, but it cost them more speed; Chelubey was herding them toward the camp once more, boxing them in. Sasha was heavy at her back. Now Chelubey was level with them again, his horse the faster. He lifted his sword a second time.

Before it could fall, Sasha heaved himself sideways, tackled the Tatar, threw him to the ground.

“Sasha!” she screamed. The mare’s pace freshened at once, the weight off her back, but Vasya was already wheeling the horse round. Her brother and Chelubey were fighting on the ground, but the Tatar had the upper hand. His fist snapped Sasha’s head back; she saw a glitter of blood in the fire. Then he was rising to his feet, leaving her brother where he lay. Chelubey called his horse, shouting at the other riders.

Sasha dragged himself to his knees. There was blood on his mouth. His lips formed a single word—Run.

She hesitated. The mare felt it and slowed.

Just then, a streak of flame shot across the heavens.

It was like a star falling: scarlet and blue and gold. The streak of flame dropped lower, lower, surged like a wave, and suddenly there was a tall golden mare, glowing in the grass, galloping alongside them.

Cries of rage and wonder from the Tatars.

“Pozhar,” Vasya whispered. The mare slanted an ear at the other horse, turned her other ear back to the men riding them down. Get on my back.

Vasya didn’t question it. She stood up, balancing on the bay mare’s back as she galloped. Pozhar had shortened her stride to pace the other horse and Vasya stepped sideways, lightly, and dropped to the mare’s golden withers. The mare’s skin was burning-hot between her knees.

A few of the oncoming men had bows; an arrow whistled past her ear. They were just inside bowshot, angling back toward the place where her brother lay. What to do? Miraculously, she had Pozhar’s speed now, but her brother was on the ground. Another arrow whistled past her cheek just as she glimpsed the Midnight-road.

An idea came to her then, so reckless her breath caught. With the rage and terror in her heart, the limits of her knowledge and her skill so miserably evident, she could think of nothing else.

“We have to get back to this same midnight. We have to come back for him,” Vasya told the mare grimly. “But we need to get help first.”

You didn’t understand, Midnight had said.

The mare set foot on the Midnight-road and they were swallowed up by the night.

* * *

THEY WOULD GET BACK to the Tatar camp on the same midnight—she would not have left otherwise. But it felt hideously like she’d abandoned her brother to die, as she galloped through the wild darkness, trees lashing at her face. She sobbed into the mare’s neck for a stride or two, in horror, in fear for Sasha, in sheer disgust at her own blundering, at the limits of her skill.

The golden mare did not move like Solovey. Solovey was round through the barrel and easy to ride. Pozhar was faster, leaner, her withers a hard ridge, her stride a great heave and surge, like riding the crest of a flood.

After a few moments, Vasya raised her head and got control of herself. Could she do it? She couldn’t even have contemplated it, were her mind not full of the sight of her brother, bloody, surrounded by enemies. She tried to think of something else.

Anything.

She couldn’t.

So she concentrated on where she wished to go. That part was easy, and quick. Her blood knew the way; she scarcely needed to think of it.

After only few minutes of galloping, they burst out of the black woods into a familiar field, hissing with wheat half-harvested. The sky was a river of stars. Vasya sat up. Pozhar slowed, dancing, wild.