The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(90)

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.

Before Oleg could remount, his mare slanted an ear and Chelubey cantered up. Oleg turned, looking wary. “Not so proud now, are you, girl?” Chelubey said in Russian.

    Vasya said, “I want to see my brother.”

“No, you don’t. He’s having a worse day than you,” said Chelubey. “He could make it easier for himself, but he just repeats the same lies, no matter what the flies do to his back.”