Sasha was looking Tuman over for scratches. “Yes,” he returned shortly. “Although I will have to hold my sword in my shield-hand.”
“Well enough,” said Dmitrii. His own gelding had a great gash in his flank; the Grand Prince mounted one of his men’s horses. “We have another hunt before us now, Kasyan Lutovich. The stragglers must be tracked to their lair.” Dmitrii bent from the saddle to give instructions to those who would bring the wounded men back to the Lavra.
Kasyan mounted up and paused, looking Vasya over. “Have a care for this boy, Brother Aleksandr,” he said lightly. “He is the color of the snow.”
Sasha frowned at Vasya’s face. “You should go back with the wounded.”
“But I am not wounded,” Vasya pointed out, with a floating, detached logic that did not appear to reassure her brother. “I want to see this done.”
“Of course you do,” put in Dmitrii. “Come, Brother Aleksandr, do not shame the boy. Drink this, Vasya, and let us go now; I want my supper.”
He handed her his skin of mead, and Vasya gulped it down, welcoming the warmth that washed away feeling. The wind had dropped now and the dead men lay huddled alone in the snow. She looked at them, and looked away.
Solovey had taken no hurt in the melee, but his head was high, his eye wild with the smell of blood.
“Come,” Vasya said, stroking the stallion’s neck. “We are not finished.”
I do not like this, said Solovey, stamping. Let us run into the woods.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
DMITRII AND KASYAN RODE FIRST: now one ahead, now the other, now talking in low tones, now silent, in the manner of men exploring a fragile trust. Sasha rode at Solovey’s flank and did not speak at all. He held his torn arm stiffly.
The snow had been trampled in the survivors’ flight, all dappled and spotted with blood. Solovey had quieted but he was nothing like calm; he would not walk, but went sideways instead, almost cantering in place, with swiveling ears.
Their pace was not the swiftest, to spare the weary horses, and the day dragged on. They trotted from clearing to shadow and back again, and they all grew colder and colder.
At last Dmitrii’s warriors rode down a single wounded bandit. “Where are the others?” the Grand Prince demanded, while Kasyan held the man jerking in the snow.
The man said something in his own tongue, eyes wide.
“Sasha,” said Dmitrii.
Sasha slid down Tuman’s shoulder and spoke, to Vasya’s surprise, in the same language.
The man shook his head frantically and poured out a stream of syllables.
“He says they have a camp just to the north. A verst, no more,” said Sasha in his measured voice.
“For that,” said Dmitrii to the bandit, stepping back, “I will kill you quickly. Here, Vasya, you have earned it.”
“No, Dmitrii Ivanovich,” Vasya choked, when Dmitrii offered her his own weapon, and gestured, grandly, to where Kasyan held the bandit. She feared she would be sick; Solovey was on the edge of bolting. “I cannot.”
The bandit must have caught the sense of the words, for he bent his head, lips moving in prayer. He was no monster now, no child-thief, but a man afraid, taking his last breaths.
Sasha, though he stood steadily, had gone gray with his wound. He drew breath to speak, but Kasyan spoke first. “Vasilii is only a reedy boy, Dmitrii Ivanovich,” he said, still gripping his captive. “Perhaps he would miss his stroke, and the men have had enough to do today without hearing a man scream and die, gutted.”
Vasya swallowed hard, and the look on her face seemed to convince the prince, for he thrust the blade through the man’s throat, petulantly. He stood an instant with heaving shoulders, recovered his good humor, wiped off the splatter, and said, “All well and good. But we will feed you properly in Moscow, Vasilii Petrovich, and you will be spearing boars at a stroke before long.”
THE BANDITS’ CAMP WAS A SMALL, crude thing. Huts to keep out the cold, and pens for the beasts, but little more. No wall or ditch or palisade; the bandits had not feared attack.
There was no sound and no movement. No smoke from cook-fires, and the whole effect was of chill stillness, grim and sad.
Kasyan spat. “They are gone, I think, Dmitrii Ivanovich. Those that survived.”
“Search everywhere,” said Dmitrii.
In and out of each hut Dmitrii’s men went, searching through the grime and darkness and reek of those men’s lives. Vasya’s hatred began to flake away, leaving only a faint sickness behind.
“Nothing,” said Dmitrii, when the last place was searched. “They are dead or fled.”
“It was well fought, Gosudar,” said Kasyan. He took off his hat and ran a hand through his matted hair. “I do not think they will trouble us again.” Unexpectedly he turned to Vasya. “Why so troubled, Vasilii Petrovich?”
“We never found their leader,” Vasya said. She cast her gaze once more about the squalid encampment. “The man who commanded them in the forest, when I stole the children back.”
Kasyan looked taken aback. “What sort of man is this leader?”
Vasya described him. “I looked for him in the battle, and among the dead,” she concluded. “I could not easily forget his face. But where is he?”
“Fled,” said Kasyan promptly. “Lost in the forest, and hungry already, if he is not dead. Do not worry, boy. We will set fire to this place. Even if this captain lives, he will not easily find more men to go adventuring in the wild. It is over.”
Vasya nodded slowly, not quite agreeing, and then she said, “What of their captives? Where have they taken them?”
Dmitrii was giving orders that fires be built and meat be shared out for the comfort of them all. “What of them?” the Grand Prince asked. “We have killed the bandits; there will be no more burnt villages.”
“But all those stolen children!”
“What of them? Be reasonable,” said Dmitrii. “If the girls are not here, then they are dead, or far away. I cannot go galloping through the thickets with weary horses to look for peasants.”
Vasya had her mouth open on an angry retort, when Kasyan’s hand fell heavily on her shoulder. She bit her tongue and whirled on him.
Dmitrii had already walked away, calling more orders.
“Do not touch me,” Vasya snapped.
“I meant no harm, Vasilii Petrovich,” Kasyan said. Evening shadows blackened his fiery hair. “It is best not to antagonize princes. There are better means to get your way. In this case, though, he is right.”
“No, he isn’t,” she said. “A good lord cares for his people.”
The men were gathering up whatever would burn. The smell of wood-smoke began drifting out into the forest.
Kasyan snorted. His amused look made her feel, resentfully, like the country girl Vasilisa Petrovna, and not at all like Dmitrii’s young hero Vasilii. “But which people, that is the question, boy. I suppose your father was the lord of some country estate.”
She said nothing.
“Dmitrii Ivanovich is responsible for a thousand times as many souls,” Kasyan continued. “He must not waste his men’s strength on futility. Those girls are gone. Do not think of heroics tonight. You are dead on your feet; you look like a mad child’s ghost.” He glanced at Solovey: a looming presence at her shoulder. “Your horse is not in much better case.”
“I do well enough,” said Vasya coldly, drawing herself straight, though she could not keep from glancing worriedly at Solovey. “Better than those stolen children.”