"Stop that!" he whispered, elbowing the dog's attentions away from him, "dammit, stop!" — language his father would by no means approve. Then to his vast relief he felt Nikolai move. "We're all right," he promised Nikolai breathlessly: he wanted ever so much to believe it himself. "We're all right, we've made it, we can rest here."
"Good boy," Nikolai said, "good boy," and might have been talking to the dog. The drums were still within the looming tower, long quiet, but it was a lonely silence, without even leaves to stir, only the soft rush of water in the stream.
Goblins, master Nikolai had said: they already had his brothers and master Karoly and everybody—even the horses. And master Nikolai had been going to see what he could do alone, when Zadny had found Nikolai and guided him—but Nikolai had run out of strength and bade them go down into the brush and get into cover. Without him, Nikolai had meant. But he had talked Nikolai into holding on; and he had gotten nun down here, and once Nikolai had caught his breath he would tell him what he had to do next, please the god.
He began to shiver in the wind, knees and elbows tucked for warmth, saw Gracja pulling at the leaves of the bushes-she had found something alive, in the very shadow of the goblin tower, at least enough to keep her stomach from hurting, he hoped. Because his did. Master Nikolai had told him everything down to this point. But there had not been much of the rabbit yesterday; and he had a very sick man in his lap and he honestly did not know what to do with him here, where goblins could find them at any moment.
He knew at least where to get warmth. He unsaddled Gracja, rubbed her down briskly with her blanket and took it, still heated from her body, back to Nikolai, and tucked it about him; then he took his water-flask from the saddle, held his head and gave him a drink.
"That's good," Nikolai breathed, in the waxing and waning of a pain he had never felt and did not want to imagine. Nikolai was stronger than he looked, he kept telling himself that, and kept believing they had only to do the right things, one after the other, and somehow the sun would come up in the morning and master Nikolai would be all right, and they would make a plan to rescue everyone alive from the goblin fortress.
But Zadny had lost Tamas' trail up there on the road. Zadny had cast about and then gone off after master Nikolai's scent, from all he could guess, as the only one who had walked out of the ambush, perhaps the strongest trail, the only one without goblin smell about it: he could think of no other reason Zadny would have followed Nikolai and left Tamas.
Nikolai breathed, "Damn you, why are you here?"
Following the dog seemed a miserably stupid thing to say. He said, with a lump in his throat, "Because I'm a fool, sir. What shall we do now?"
There was long silence. He thought Nikolai must have fainted again, and feared he might even have died, but Nikolai blinked, then, staring at the sky.
"A pair of fools," Nikolai said finally. "I'm not going to make it, boy. Can you get home from here?"
"No, sir." Short answers, Nikolai had always wanted from them, no excuses, when he was teaching them. He blinked tears and tried not to shed them. "I'm out of food."
"There's the horse," Nikolai said, and he did not for a moment understand that.
"No, sir," he said, "no, sir, I won't."
"Then eat the dog and ride the horse."
"No, sir!"
"Like your damn fool brother," Nikolai muttered, but which brother he meant, Yuri had no idea. Nikolai shut his eyes, and drew several slow breaths, then looked at him in the starlight. "The horse is goblin bait. So's the dog. So are all of us. You understand that, boy? Are you going to stay here and watch, and then be dessert? Your father's lost two sons in this place. You're the heir. Do you understand me?"
"So what were you doing? Were you going home without them?"
"I was going to see—" Nikolai stopped. Master Nikolai stared at him straight on, all shadow and starlight. "Don't you think about it. Don't you think about it, boy."
But it was exactly what he thought master Nikolai would do. Nikolai had been going down there, hurt as he was, to see if his brothers were alive, or if any of them were, or if there was anything he could do, and master Nikolai had not waited to get well, because there was no time to wait, if the goblins had his brothers in that tower. So he knew what he ought to do, then, first off.
And mere was still night left.
"Boy," Nikolai said, when he got up to go to the tower. "Young lord." More respectfully, and struggling for his words. "Listen to me. ..."
"I'll be careful," he said, and got his bow and his arrow case from Gracja's saddle.
"They can smell you," Nikolai whispered, evidently resigned to what he would do. "At least trolls can. Watch the wind."
Yuri came back and squatted down with the bow across his knees, out of Nikolai's reach, because Nikolai was devious, he knew that. "I'll find out where they are. Don't move around and make it bleed." Nikolai had lost enough blood. It was all down his side. Nikolai said he had pulled the arrow himself, and he flinched even thinking about it. "If I'm gone awhile I'm hiding, all right?"
"Don't take that damned dog," Nikolai told him. "Leave him with me."
That also seemed like a good idea.
The stream was cold water, stones slick with moss. Tamas wobbled along the edge, slid and slipped and saved himself from falling, but the effort left him hurting. Meanwhile the troll carried the witch-girl effortlessly in its arms and set her safe and dry-shod on firmer ground. Then it forged ahead of them, breaking a passage through the brush.
A whispering began to surround them, not alone the sound of water over stones—but the wind in living leaves. The branches he fended with his hands were pliant, and the boughs above their heads sighed with life. The fire that had blackened the mountains must not have reached downstream—and very far downstream, as it seemed to him, before the troll slowed to a stop, looking as satisfied as if it had gotten them somewhere besides the middle of a forest.
But he was glad enough to rest, and glad enough to find things alive, and sank down on the spot, covered in sweat and shaking. The troll for its part seemed to be leaving them—it walked back up the water's edge, passing him with no notice or apology; the witch girl called after it, "Thank you, master Krukczy."
It turned in the moonlight, looking like someone's abandoned mop, except the snaking tail. It bobbed a little and inclined as if it bowed, then turned its back and waded into the stream, a moving ripple, that was all.
Tamas muttered, "Good manners for a troll."
"He's not a troll," she said sharply. "His name is Krukczy like his tower. This is his Place, and he saved your life."
Troll was close enough, in his opinion. But he had not meant to offend her, or the mop, for that matter: he got up with the very last of his strength and put forth the effort of manners, starting to say, "I am grateful—" But she turned her back and began to walk away down the shore, evidently expecting him to follow.
Damned if he would stammer and protest after her. For a very little he would let her walk on alone to her business, and take his rest here, and go home.
But he needed a horse and she claimed she had one; he needed food and he had none—a bad position for any assertion of his independence, no matter that the arrogant witchling looked fragile as a flower and younger than he was. And she had claimed to know Karoly.
So he followed, on what breath he could find. He even recovered his manners, and panted, when he had almost overtaken her, "I apologize. He's not a troll. Whatever he is."