Dmitrii Ivanovich had his faults, but indolence was not among them; Sasha found the Grand Prince already down in his dooryard, apple-cheeked and cheerful, waving a sword, attended by his younger boyars. His pet swordsmith from Novgorod had made a new blade, serpent-hilted. The two cousins, prince and monk, examined the sword with a doubtful admiration.
“It will strike fear into my enemies,” Dmitrii said.
“Until you try to club someone in the face with the hilt and it shatters,” returned Sasha. “Look at the thin place—there—where the snake’s head joins the body.”
Dmitrii considered the hilt again. “Well, try it with me,” he said.
“God keep you,” said Sasha at once. “But if you are going to break that sword-hilt on someone, let it not be me.”
Dmitrii was just turning to hail one of his more irritating boyars when Sasha’s voice, continuing, turned him back. “Enough playing,” Sasha said impatiently. “Come, the storm is over. There are villages burning. Will you ride out with me?”
A call and some commotion from outside the Grand Prince’s gate swallowed Dmitrii’s answer. Both men paused, listening. “A dozen horses,” said Sasha, raising a questioning brow at the prince. “Who—”
Next moment Dmitrii’s steward ran up. “A great lord is come,” he panted. “He says he must see you. He has brought a gift.”
Thick lines gathered between Dmitrii’s brows. “Great lord? Who? I know where my boyars are, and none of them are due— Well, let him in, before he freezes to death at the gate.”
The steward went off; hinges squealed in the bitter morning, and a stranger came through the gate, riding a very fine chestnut and trailing a string of retainers. The chestnut curvetted and tried to rear; his rider’s skilled hand brought him down and he dismounted in a puff of fresh snow, scanning the lively dooryard.
“Well,” said the Grand Prince, his hands in his belt. His boyars had left off their sparring and gathered, muttering at his back, eyes on the newcomer.
The stranger considered the knot of people and then crossed the snow to stand before them. He bowed to the Grand Prince.
Sasha looked the newcomer over. He was obviously a boyar: broadly built and finely dressed, with sloe-dark eyes, long-lashed. What could be seen of his hair was red as autumn apples. Sasha had never seen him before.
The boyar said to Dmitrii, “Are you the Grand Prince of Moscow and Vladimir?”
“As you see,” Dmitrii returned coldly. The red-haired man’s tone was just this side of insolent. “Who are you?”
The startlingly dark and liquid gaze moved from the Grand Prince to his cousin. “I am called Kasyan Lutovich, Gosudar,” he said evenly. “I hold land in my own right, two weeks’ travel to the east.”
Dmitrii was unimpressed. “I recall no tribute from— What are your lands called?”
“Bashnya Kostei,” supplied the red-haired man. At their raised brows, he added, “My father had a sense of humor, and at the end of our third starving winter, when I was a boy, he gave our house its name.” Sasha could see the pride in the set of Kasyan’s broad shoulders when he added, “We have always lived in our forest, asking nothing of any man. But now I am come with gifts, Grand Prince, and a request, for my people are sorely pressed.”
Kasyan punctuated this speech with a gesture at his retainers, who brought forth a filly, iron-gray and so highly bred that even the Grand Prince was for a moment silenced.
“A gift,” Kasyan said. “Perhaps your guards might offer my men hospitality.”
The Grand Prince contemplated the mare but said only, “Pressed?”
“By men we cannot find,” said Kasyan grimly. “Bandits. Burning my villages, Dmitrii Ivanovich.”
INVITED INTO THE PRINCE’S receiving-room, the horses consigned to oats and the stranger’s men assigned to lodgings, the red-headed Kasyan drank off his beer beneath Dmitrii’s low, painted ceiling while Sasha and the Grand Prince waited with impatient courtesy. Wiping his mouth, Kasyan began, “It started with whispers, a season ago, and thirdhand reports from lost hamlets. Robbers. Fires.” He turned his cup in a hard hand, his glance faraway. “I did not heed. There are always desperate men, and rumor exaggerates. I put it out of my mind when the first snow fell.”
Kasyan paused again to drink. “I see now that I made a mistake,” he went on. “Now I hear reports of burning at every hand, and desperate peasants come every day, or nearly, begging for grain, or for protection.”
Dmitrii and Sasha glanced at each other. The boyars and attendants craned to hear. “Well,” said Dmitrii to his visitor, leaning forward in his carved chair, “you are their lord, are you not? Have you helped them yourself?”
Kasyan’s lips thinned to sternness. “We have gone hunting for these evil men not once, but many times since the snow fell. There are clever folk in my household, fine dogs, skilled hunters.”
“Then I do not see why you came to me,” said Dmitrii, surveying his visitor. “You can hardly hope to escape the tribute now, since I know your name.”
“I would not have come without a choice,” Kasyan said. “We have found no trace of these bandits—not even a little—not so much as a hoofmark. Nothing but burning, and wailing, and destruction. My people are whispering that these bandits are not men at all, but demons. So I have come to Moscow,” he finished, with a frustration that he could not hide, “when I would rather have stayed home. Because there are men of war, and men of God, in this city, and I must beg help for my people.”
Dmitrii, Sasha saw, looked fascinated despite himself. “No trace at all?” he said.
“None, Gosudar,” said Kasyan. “Perhaps these bandits are not men at all.”
“We leave in three days,” Dmitrii said.
5. The Fire in the Wilderness
Olga did not tell her brother what she had learned of their father’s death, or their sister’s. Sasha had danger enough awaiting him, and he must meet it with a clear head. It would grieve him especially to hear of Vasya, she thought. He loved her so.
So Olga merely kissed Sasha and wished him well, on the day he came to take his leave. She had a new cloak for him, and a good skin of mead.
Sasha took the gifts distractedly. His mind was already out in the wild: on bandits and burnt villages and on how to manage a young prince who no longer wished to be a vassal. “God keep you, sister,” he said.
“And you, brother,” Olga said, her gathered calm unbroken. She was used to leave-taking. This brother came and went like a wind in the summer pines, and her husband, Vladimir, was no better. But this time she thought of her father and sister, gone, never to return, and the effort of composure cost her. Always, they go while I remain. “I beg you will remember me in your prayers.”
DMITRII AND HIS MEN left Moscow on a day of drifting white: white snow and white sun, glittering on white towers. A mocking wind teased its way beneath their cloaks and hoods as Dmitrii strode out into his dooryard, dressed for journeying, and vaulted lightly to his horse’s back. “Come, cousin!” he called to Sasha. “Bright day, and dry snow. Let us be gone!”
The grooms stood ready with haltered packhorses, and a troop of well-mounted men waited, armed with swords and short spears.
Kasyan’s people mixed uneasily with Dmitrii’s. Sasha wondered what was behind their unsmiling faces. Kasyan himself sat quiet on his big chestnut mare, his glance flicking round the teeming dooryard.