The Girl in the Tower Read online

  Solovey had no sympathy for her anger; he was snorting and tossing his head, eager for the road. Scowling, Vasya found new bread and mead in her saddlebag and ate, threw snow on the fire (which went out quite meekly after lasting so long), fastened the saddlebags, and climbed into the saddle.

  The versts passed untroubled, and Vasya had days of riding in which to regain her strength, to remember—and to try to forget. But one morning, when the sun was well over the treetops, Solovey threw up his head and shied.

  Vasya, startled, said, “What!”—and then she saw the body.

  He had been a big man, but now his beard bristled with frost, and his open eyes stared out, frozen and blank. He lay in a bloody stretch of trampled snow.

  Vasya, reluctantly, slid to the ground. Swallowing back nausea, she saw what the man had died of: the stroke of a sword or an ax, in the notch where his neck met his shoulder, that had split him to the ribs. Her gorge rose; she forced it down.

  Vasya touched his stiff hand. A single pair of bootprints had taken this man, running, to his end.

  But where were the killers? Vasya bent to retrace the dead man’s steps. A dusting of new snow had left them blurry. Solovey followed her, blowing nervously.

  Abruptly the trees ended, and they found themselves at the edge of cleared fields. In the middle of the fields lay a village, burned.

  Vasya felt sick again. The burnt village was very like her own: izby and barns and bathhouses, a wooden palisade and stumpy wintertime fields. But these huts were smoldering ruins. The palisade lay on its side like a wounded deer. The smoke rolled out over the forest. Vasya bent her head to breathe through a fold of her cloak. She could hear the wailing.

  They are gone, the ones who did this, said Solovey.

  Not long gone, though, Vasya thought. Here and there little fires still dotted the landscape, that time or labor had not put out. Vasya vaulted to Solovey’s back. “Go closer,” she told the horse, and she hardly recognized her own voice.

  They slipped out from between the trees beside the remains of the palisade. Solovey leaped it, nostrils showing red. The survivors in the village moved stiffly, as if ready to join the dead they were piling before the ruin of a little church. It was too cold for the bodies to smell. The blood had clotted on their wounds, and they stared open-mouthed at the brilliant sky.

  The living did not raise their eyes.

  In the shadow of one izba, a woman with two dark plaits knelt beside a dead man. Her hands curled into each other like dead leaves, and her body slumped, though she was not weeping.

  Something about the line of the woman’s hair, black as gall against a slender back, caught at Vasya’s memory. She was off Solovey before she thought.

  The woman stumbled upright, and of course she was not Vasya’s sister; she was no one Vasya knew. Only a peasant with too many cold days stamped on her face. The blood had been ground into her palms, where she must have tried to stanch a death-wound. A dirty knife appeared in her hand and she pressed her back to the wall of her house. Her voice came grating from her throat. “Your fellows came and went already,” she said to Vasya. “We have nothing else. One of us will die, boy, before you can touch me.”

  “I—no,” said Vasya, stammering in her pity. “I am not one of the ones who did this; I am only a traveler.”

  The woman did not lower her knife. “Who are you?”

  “I—I am called Vasya,” said the girl cautiously, for Vasya could be a nickname for a boy, Vasilii, as well as a girl, Vasilisa. “Can you tell me what has happened here?”

  The woman’s furious laughter shrilled in Vasya’s ears. “Where do you come from, that you do not know? The Tatars came.”

  “You, there,” said a hard voice. “Who are you?”

  Vasya’s head jerked around. An old muzhik was striding toward her, hard and broad and death-pale under his beard. His split knuckles bled around the bloody scythe clutched in his hand. Others appeared, stepping around the burning places. They all held rude weapons, axes and hunting-knives; most had blood on their faces. “Who are you?” The cry came from half a dozen throats, and then the villagers were closing round her. “Horseman,” said one. “A straggler. A boy. Kill him.”

  Without thinking, Vasya threw herself onto Solovey. The stallion took a great galloping stride and leaped over the heads of the nearest villagers, who fell swearing into the bloody snow. The horse came down light as a leaf and would have kept running then, out of the wreckage and back into the forest, but Vasya ground her seat-bones into his back and forced him to a halt. Solovey stood still, barely, poised on the edge of flight.

  Vasya found herself facing a ring of frightened, furious faces. “I mean you no harm,” she said, heart hammering. “I am no raider, only a traveler, alone.”

  “Where did you come from?” called one villager.

  “From the forest,” said Vasya, with half-truth. “What has happened here?”

  An ugly pause, full of violent grief. Then the woman with black hair spoke. “Bandits. They brought fire and arrows and steel. They came for our girls.”

  “Your girls? Did they take them?” demanded Vasya. “Where?”

  “They took three,” said the man bitterly. “Three little ones. It has been so since the winter started, in every village in these parts. They come, they burn what they will, and then they take their pick of the children.” He gestured vaguely at the forest. “Girls—always girls. Rada there”—he gestured toward the black-haired woman—“had her daughter stolen, and her husband slain when he fought. She has no one now.”

  “They took my Katya.” Rada’s bloody hands twisted together. “I told my husband not to fight, that I could not lose them both. But when they dragged our girl away, he couldn’t bear it…” Her voice strangled and fell silent.

  Words filled Vasya’s mouth, but there was not one that would serve. “I am sorry,” she said at length. “I am—” She was trembling all over. Suddenly Vasya touched Solovey’s side; the horse wheeled and galloped away. Behind her she heard cries, but she did not look back. Solovey vaulted the damaged palisade and slipped in among the trees.

  The horse knew her thought before she voiced it. We aren’t going on, are we?

  “No.”

  I wish you’d learn how to fight properly before you start getting into them, the horse said unhappily. A white ring showed around his eye. But he made no protest when she nudged him back to where the dead man lay in the wood.

  “I’m going to try to help,” said Vasya. “Bogatyry ride the world, rescuing maidens. Why not I?” She spoke with more bravado than she felt. Her ice-dagger seemed a mighty responsibility, in its sheath along her spine. She thought also of her father, her mother, her nurse: the people she had not been able to save.

  The horse did not reply. The wood was perfectly still, beneath a careless sun. The horse’s breathing and hers seemed loud in the silence. “No, I don’t mean to get into a fight,” she said. “I’d be killed, and then Morozko will have been right, and I can’t allow that. Sneaking, Solovey, we will sneak, as little girls who steal honeycakes do.” She tried for a tone of careless courage, but her gut was cold and shaking.

  She slid to the ground beside the dead man and began to search in earnest for tracks. But she found nothing to show where the raiders had gone.

  “Bandits are not ghosts,” Vasya said to Solovey in frustration. “What manner of men do not leave tracks?”

  The horse switched his tail, uneasy, but made no answer.

  Vasya was thinking hard. “Come on, then,” she said. “We have to go back to the village.”

  The sun had passed its zenith. The trees nearest the palisade threw long shadows onto the ruined izby and hid a little of the horror. Solovey halted at the edge of the wood. “Wait for me here,” said Vasya.“If I call, you must come for me at once. Knock people down if you have to. I am not going to die because of their fear.”

  The horse dropped his nose into her palm.

  The village lay in gho
stly silence. Its people had all gone to the church, where a pyre was building. Vasya, clinging to the shadows, crept past the palisade and flattened herself against the wall of Rada’s house. The woman was nowhere in sight, though there were drag marks where they had taken her husband away.

  Vasya firmed her lips and slipped inside the hut. A pig in one corner squealed; her heart almost stopped. “Hush,” she told it.

  The creature eyed her beadily.

  Vasya went to the oven. Foolish chance, this, but she could think of nothing else. She had a little cold bread in her hand. “I see you,” she said softly, into the cold oven-mouth. “I am not of your people, but I have brought you bread.”

  There was a silence. The oven-mouth was still, a deadly hush lay upon that house, whose master was dead, whose child had been stolen.

  Vasya ground her teeth. Why would a strange house’s domovoi come at her calling? Perhaps she was a fool.

  Then movement came from deep in the oven, and a small, sooty creature, all covered in hair, poked its head out of the oven-mouth. Twiggy fingers splayed on the hearthstones, it shrilled, “Go away! This is my house.”

  Vasya was glad to see this domovoi, and gladder still to see him a solid creature, unlike the cloudy bannik in that ill-fated bathhouse. She laid her bread carefully on the bricks before the oven. “A broken house now,” she said.

  Sooty tears welled in the domovoi’s eyes, and it sat down in the oven-mouth with a puff of ash. “I tried to tell them,” it said. “ ‘Death,’ I cried, last night. ‘Death.’ But they only heard the wind.”

  “I am going after Rada’s child,” said Vasya. “I mean to bring her back. But I do not know how to find her. There are no tracks in the snow.” She spoke with her head turned, listening hard for footsteps outside. “Master,” she said to the domovoi. “My nurse told me that if a family ever leaves its house, a domovoi may follow, if his people ask him rightly. The child cannot ask, but I am asking on her behalf. Do you know where this child has gone? Can you help me follow her?”

  The domovoi said nothing, sucking its splintery fingers.

  It was only a faint hope after all, Vasya thought.

  “Take a coal,” said the domovoi, voice gone soft, like settling embers. “Take it, and follow the light. If you bring my Katya back, my kind will owe you a debt.”

  Vasya drew a pleased breath, surprised at her success. “I will do my best.” She reached into the oven with her mittened hand and seized a lump of cold, charred wood. “There is no light,” she said, examining it doubtfully.

  The domovoi said nothing; when she looked, it had disappeared back into the oven. The pig squealed again; faintly Vasya heard voices from the other end of the village, the crunch of feet in the snow. She ran to the door, stumbling on warped floorboards. Outside it was true evening now, full of concealing shadows.

  On the other side of the village, the pyre caught and went up: a beacon in the fading light. The wailing rose with the smoke, as the people mourned their dead.

  “God keep you all,” Vasya whispered, and then she was out the door and away, back into the clean forest, where Solovey waited beneath the trees.

  The domovoi’s coal was still gray as the evening. Vasya mounted Solovey and peered down at it, dubiously. “We’ll try different directions and see what happens,” she said at length.

  It was getting dark. The horse’s ears eased back in obvious disapproval of such slipshod proceedings, but he set out to circle the village.

  Vasya watched the cold lump in her hand. Was that—? “Wait, Solovey.”

  The horse halted. The wood in Vasya’s hand now had a faint red edge. She was sure of it. “That way,” she whispered.

  Step. Another. Halt. The coal brightened, grew hotter. Vasya was glad of her heavy mitten. “Straight on,” Vasya said.

  Slowly their pace increased, from walk to trot, to ground-skimming lope, as Vasya grew surer of her direction. It was a clear night, moon nearly full, but bitterly cold. Vasya refused to think of it. She blew on her hands, drew her cloak round her face, and followed the light determinedly.

  She asked, “Can you carry me and three children?”

  Solovey shook his mane dubiously. If they are none of them large, he replied. But even if I can carry them, what will you do then? These bandits will know where we’ve gone. What’s to prevent them from following?

  “I don’t know,” Vasya admitted. “Let’s find them first.”

  Brighter the coal glowed, as though to defy the darkness. It began to scorch her mitten, and Vasya was just thinking of scooping it into some snow to save her hand when Solovey skidded to a halt.

  A fire twinkled between the trees.

  Vasya swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. She dropped the coal and put a hand on the stallion’s neck. “Quietly,” she whispered, hoping she sounded braver than she felt.

  The horse’s ears moved forward and back.

  Vasya left Solovey in a stand of trees. Moving with all a forest-child’s care, she crept to the edge of a ring of firelight. Twelve men sat in the circle, talking. At first Vasya thought there was something wrong with her hearing. Then she realized that they were speaking in a tongue she did not know: the first time in all her life she’d heard one.

  Their bound captives huddled in the middle. A stolen hen smoked and dripped over the flames, while a good-sized skin went back and forth. The men wore heavy quilted coats but had set aside their spiked helms. Leather caps lined in wool covered their heads; their well-kept weapons lay near to hand.

  Vasya took a deep breath, thinking hard. They seemed like ordinary men, but what manner of bandit leaves no tracks? They might be even more dangerous than they looked.

  It is hopeless, Vasya thought. There were too many of them. How had she ever imagined—? Her teeth sank into her lower lip.

  The three children sat huddled together near the fire, dirty and frightened. The oldest was a girl of perhaps thirteen, the youngest little more than a baby, her cheeks tear-streaked. They were huddled close for warmth, but even from the undergrowth, Vasya could see them shiver.

  Outside the ring of firelight, the trees swayed in the darkness. In the distance a wolf howled.

  Vasya wriggled soundlessly away from the firelight and returned to Solovey. The stallion put his head around to nudge his nose against her chest. How to get the children away from the fire? Somewhere the wolves cried again. Solovey raised his head, hearing the distant yips, and Vasya was struck anew by the grace of his muscled neck, the lovely head and dark eye.

  An idea came to her, wild and mad. Her breath caught, but she would not pause to think. “All right,” she said, breathless with terror and excitement. “I have a plan. Let’s go back to that yew tree.”

  Solovey followed her to a great gnarled old yew they had passed near the trail. As he did, Vasya whispered into his ear.

  THE MEN WERE EATING their stolen hen while the girls, spent, drooped against each other. Vasya had returned to her place in the undergrowth. She crouched in the snow, holding her breath.

  Solovey, saddleless, stepped into the firelight. Muscle rippled in the stallion’s back and quarters; his barrel was deep as the vault of a church.

  The men, as one, sprang to their feet.

  The stallion slipped nearer the fire, ears pricked. Vasya hoped the bandits would think he was some boyar’s prize that had broken his rope and escaped.

  Solovey tossed his head, playing the part. His ears swiveled toward the other horses. A mare neighed. He rumbled back.

  One of the bandits had a little bread in his hand; he bent slowly, picked up a length of rope, and, making soothing noises, began walking toward the stallion. The other men fanned out to try to head the beast off.

  Vasya bit back a laugh. The men were staring, enchanted as boys in springtime. Solovey was coy as any maiden. Twice a man got nearly close enough to lay a hand on the horse’s neck, but each time Solovey sidled away. Only a little way, though; never enough to make them give up hope.
/>   Slowly, slowly the stallion was drawing the men away from the fire, from the captives, and from their horses.

  Choosing her moment, Vasya crept noiselessly around to where the horses stood. She slipped among them, murmuring reassurance, hiding between their bodies. The eldest mare slanted a wary ear back at the newcomer.

  “Wait,” Vasya whispered.

  She bent with her knife and cut their picket. Two strokes, and the horses were all standing loose. Vasya darted back into the trees and loosed the long call of a hunting wolf.

  Solovey reared with the others, shrilling in fright. In an instant the camp was a maelstrom of frightened beasts. Vasya yipped like a wolf-bitch and Solovey bolted. Most of the horses took off after him, and their fellows, reluctant to be left, followed. In an instant, they had all disappeared into the woods, and the camp was in an uproar. A man who was obviously the leader had to bellow to be heard over the din.

  He roared out a word, and the shouting slowly died. Vasya lay flat in the snow, hidden in the bracken and the shadows, holding her breath. She had pulled the picket in that frantic moment of confusion, then ducked back into the woods. The horses’ hoofprints had obscured her footsteps. She was hoping no one would wonder how the horses had gotten loose so easily.

  The leader snapped out a series of orders. The men murmured what sounded like assent, although one of them looked sour.

  In five minutes, the camp was almost deserted, more easily than Vasya had been expecting. They are overconfident, she thought. Well they might be, since they leave no tracks.

  One of the men—the sour one—had clearly been ordered to stay behind with the captives. He subsided sulkily onto a log.

  Vasya wiped her sweating palms on her cloak and took a firmer grip on her dagger. Her stomach was a ball of ice. She had tried not to think about this part: what to do if there was a guard.

  Rada’s face, hollow with grief, swam up before her eyes. Vasya set her jaw.