Vasya watched him warily. This could be no other than the bannik, the bathhouse-guardian, and banniki could be both kind and quick to anger.
“Master,” she said politely, “forgive my intrusion.” This bannik was strangely gray; his fat little body looked more like smoke than flesh.
Perhaps, Vasya thought, towns do not agree with him.
Or perhaps the constant church-bell reminded folk too often that banniki should not exist. The thought made her sad.
But this bannik still considered her in silence, with small, clever eyes, and Vasya knew what she must do next. She got up and poured out some hot water from the bucket on the stove, broke off a good birch-branch and laid it before him, then added more water to the rocks on the seething oven.
The chyert, still unspeaking, smiled at her, climbed up to the other bench, and lay back in companionable silence. His cloudy beard writhed with the steam. Vasya decided to take his silence for permission to stay. Her eyelids drooped shut again.
Perhaps a quarter-hour later, she was sweating freely, and the steam had begun to die down. She was about to go drench herself in cold water when the squeal of a furious stallion ripped through her heat-sodden senses. A resounding crash followed; it sounded as though Solovey had come bodily through the stable wall. Vasya came gasping upright.
The bannik was frowning.
A scraping noise at the outer door, and then the sound of the inn-wife’s voice, “Yes, a boy with a big bay horse, but I don’t see why you have to—”
Thick silence followed the inn-wife’s outraged shriek. The bannik bared its foggy teeth. Vasya was on her feet and reaching for the door. But before she could lift the latch, a heavy step sounded on the floor of the outer room.
Stark naked, she stared wildly around the little shed. But there was only one door, and no windows.
The door thundered open. At the last instant Vasya shook her hair forward, so that it provided meager concealment. A bar of watery daylight pierced her flinching eyes; she stood sweating in nothing but her hair.
The man at the door took a moment to pick her out of the steam. A look of surprise crossed his face, then one of oafish delight.
Vasya pressed herself against the far wall, terrified, mortified, the inn-wife’s shriek still ringing in her ears. Outside, Solovey bugled again, and there was more shouting.
Vasya struggled to think. Perhaps the man would leave her an opening to dart around him. A voice in the anteroom and a second hulking figure answered that question.
“Well,” said the second man, looking startled, but not displeased. “This is not a boy at all but a maiden—unless it’s a water-nymph. Shall we find out which?”
“I go first,” his companion retorted, not taking his eyes from Vasya. “I found her.”
“Well, then, catch her, and don’t be all day about it,” said the second man. “We have that boy to find.”
Vasya bared her teeth, hands shaking, mind blank with panic.
“Come here, girl,” said the first man, wiggling his fingers as though she were a dog. “Come here. Relax. I’ll be good to you.”
Vasya was calculating chances, wondering whether, if she flung herself on the first man, he might fall against the oven. She had to get to Solovey. Her hair fell a little away from her throat and the jewel gleamed between her breasts. The first man’s eye fell on it, and he licked his lips. “Where’d you steal that?” he said. “Well, never mind, I’ll have it, too. Come here.” He took a step forward.
She tensed to spring. But she had forgotten the bannik.
A gush of hot water came flying out of nowhere and doused the man from head to heel. He fell back screaming, tripped on the red-hot oven, struck his head with a crack, and went limp, sizzling horribly.
The second man stared, dumbfounded, even as another gout of water slapped him across the face. He stumbled backward, shrieking, and was driven from the bathhouse, flogged by an invisible hand wielding a birch stick.
Vasya dashed into the outer room. She flung on leggings, shirt, boots, and tunic and slung her cloak around her shoulders. The clothes clung to her sweating skin. The bannik waited in the doorway, silent still, but smiling now, viciously. The shouting outside had risen to a furious pitch. Vasya paused an instant and bowed low.
The creature bowed back.
Vasya ran outside. Solovey had broken out of the stable. Three men stood around him, not daring to come too near. “Get his rope!” cried a man from the arch of the gate. “Hold fast! The others are coming.”
A fourth man, who had clearly attempted to seize the rope dangling from Solovey’s neck, lay motionless on the ground with a great, seeping dent in his skull.
Solovey saw Vasya and hurled himself toward her. The men dodged, shouting, and in that moment, Vasya vaulted to the horse’s back.
Outside, more shouts rang out, the crunch of running feet. More men ran into the inn-yard, stringing their bows.
All this for her? “Mother of God—” Vasya whispered.
The wind rose to a howl, piercing her clothes, and the inn-yard plunged into shadow as clouds shut off the sun. “Go!” Vasya shouted at Solovey, just as the first of the men put an arrow to his bow.
“Halt,” he cried, “or die!”
But Solovey was already running. The arrow whistled past. Vasya clung to the horse. What, thought some dim, detached part of Vasya’s mind, did I do to merit this? The rest of her was wondering how it felt to die with a dozen arrows in her breast. Solovey had his head down now, hooves clawing at the snow. Two leaps covered the distance between her and the street. There were men there—so many men, some part of her mind thought—but Solovey took them by surprise, plowed through and past them.
The street lay in dusky twilight now. Snow fell in blinding flakes, masking them from view.
Silent and intent, Solovey ran—galloping, sliding, far too fast, across the snow of those wooden-boarded streets. Vasya felt him lurch and recover, and fought to keep her balance, blinded by the snow. Hoofbeats thudded behind them, mingled with muffled shouts, but those were already falling back. No horse could outrun Solovey.
A black shape leaped up before them: a vast, solid thing in a world of whirling white. “The gate!” came the faint cry. “Close the gate!” The dim shapes of guards, two on either side, were urging the massive thing closed. The gap was narrowing. But Solovey put on a burst of speed and dashed through. A wrench as Vasya’s leg scraped wood. Then they were free. A burst of shouting broke from the wall-top, and the twang and hiss of another arrow. She hunched nearer Solovey’s neck and did not look back. The snow was falling thicker than ever.
No more than a bowshot from the city, the wind abruptly died and the sky cleared. Looking back, Vasya saw that a snowstorm, purple as a bruise, lay over the town, shielding her escape. But for how long?
The bells were ringing below. Would they come after her? She thought of the drawn bow, the whine as the arrow slid past her ear. It seemed to her that they would. Her heart was racing still. “L-let’s go,” she said to Solovey. It was only when she tried to speak that she realized that she was shaking, that her teeth clacked together, that her skin was wet, that already she was growing very cold. She turned him toward the hollow tree where she had hidden his saddle and saddlebags. “We must get away from here.”
A violet evening sky hung glowing overhead. Vasya’s skin was still wet from the bathhouse, and her hair, hidden in her hood, was damp. But she weighed the dangers of fire against the dangers of flight and pushed the horse on. Somewhere in her brain was an arrow, narrowing to a point, and a man with composed, inhuman eyes, taking aim.