"Boy, I want you to take the horse."
"No!" he said. "No. If you get off, I'm staying here. We're both staying here. Do you want that?"
"It's left us," Nikolai said. "It's left us in the middle of the damn woods, boy, it's smelled goblins and it's run."
"Then don't make things worse! I can't get you back up on the horse if you fell, and I don't even know where home is."
"You can track us backwards. Back to the tower ..."
"No, sir! I won't, I won't do it—you stay on, you hear me? If you get off, I'm staying with you until you can get on again. Do you hear me, I'll do it!"
Nikolai seemed to think about that. Or Nikolai was in too much pain to think at all. He leaned heavily on the saddlebow until all Yuri could do was steady him; and he knew it hurt Nikolai's wounded arm, but it was the only way he could manage. He started leading Gracja again, making as much speed as he could, looking back as he could to be sure Nikolai was still steady.
But a thread of blood was running down Nikolai's hand, staining Gracja's side.
He's dying, Yuri thought in panic. He's going to die if we don't get help, and there's nothing we can do any taster than we are.
Zadny went in front of them. "Find people," Yuri said to him—"Zadny, find people, do you hear me?"
There was no knowing whether Zadny understood a word,
but he kept to the front of them, sometimes losing himself in the brush, so he feared they would lose track of the hound, too, and be alone.
"Maybe we can find somebody besides Nikolai that got away," Yuri said to himself. "Everything's going to be all right, it's just trolls don't know what people need, it's just scared, probably Nikolai chasing it scared him, he'll come back. Nikolai shouldn't have run the horse, that's all—the blood will stop."
"Karoly's sister," Nikolai murmured, once, obscurely, and he stopped Gracja and went back to him to see whether Nikolai was all right. But Nikolai only said, "Are we still on the trail?" and he said, "Yes, sir, I think we are. . . ." realizing with a chill that Nikolai was off his head and lost. He had made Nikolai come with him. He had been disrespectful, he had refused Nikolai's advice, and been smug about it; and offered Nikolai no choice but come with him— because he had known in his heart of hearts that Nikolai would never take Gracja and ride home without him. He had wanted Nikolai to get on Gracja's back and come with him this morning; and he had been so sure he was doing the right thing, so sure Nikolai was strong enough—although Nikolai had told him last night he would never make it. He had not listened: he had not wanted to listen, that was the bitter truth. Nikolai had said go home and have his father send men who could do more than a stupid boy could do-Nikolai had never once asked him to get him to safety, Nikolai was too strong for that, Nikolai was supposed to be with him to advise him, that was the way he had intended things . . .
The woods blurred in front of him. He walked and followed Zadny, and looked for the hoof-prints master Nikolai had said he had seen, because there was no time to be wrong now—thanks to his cleverness and his disobedience, master Nikolai had no time.
The sun sank as they followed the watercourse downhill, sometimes among rocks, in the shadow now of tall beeches not fully leafed, and early willow, and brush as stripped as the brush the other side of the mountains. The plague of beasts had passed here, too, Tamas thought, in the numb lucidity that had come since he had had water and food. Leafless vines snagged the horses' feet and snapped, dry branches broke under their hooves. The horses, taller than deer, found browse along the way, a snatch of leaves, and in clear spaces, patches of stream-side cress that had grown since the depredations. Ela held the lead, no horsewoman, but Jerzy's mare went along as if it had home and stable in mind.
So did Lwi, without his urging; and when he protested the horses could not stand that pace forever, she declared they would be all right, that was her word, they would be all right.
"Are there goblins behind us?" he asked. And got no answer.
His bruised bones ached, after so much and so rough riding—but he was thinking clearly enough these last hours to realize that he had lost his grandfather's sword, and even the saddle knife, with his own horse. Nikolai's bow was all the weapon they had, that and its handful of arrows.
Well done, he thought bitterly, in Bogdan's tones. Well done, little brother. And only now wondering what you have for resources? You unfailingly amaze me ...
He tried at least to calculate how far they had come. In a clearer space he looked back and all about for the sight of mountains, but the trees still loomed taller: the forest was all their surroundings, the colorless and dimming sky with its high cloud making time itself uncertain. He was all too awake, in the dark that lived within the forest, where twilight was early and shadowed with leaves. The whole world tottered on the edge of reason, imagination led nowhere, and he had no sane choice now but the one he was following.
"We'll make it by twilight," Ela declared, the only words she had volunteered to him since noon. "We have to."
He repeated his question: "What do we fear in this woods?"
"All manner of things," she said, and added: "Everything."
Lwi tossed his head, sweating. Tamas patted his neck beneath the fall of mane, misliking vague answers, and disliking witches more by the passing hour. Maybe she could ease his aches, but the ease did not last. Maybe she could make creatures go where she wanted, but clearly that did not extend to goblins, and maybe not to bears; so what good was that?
Besides, who knew what women thought, or might do, or why? Here he rode in a shadowy, goblin-haunted woods asking himself not for the first time how Ela had escaped the goblins' ambush, or hidden the horses, or made bargains with trolls to rescue him.
Walls before nightfall had been his hope in mid-afternoon: the expectation that they would find some fortified and human hold, an unassailable place with a great lady who happened to be a witch, but who, please the god, would turn out to remind him a great deal of the Karoly he had loved, an old woman who would keep a study in equal clutter, who would answer his questions with equal sympathy, tell him the good and the bad that he had to deal with, and magic up a wise and potent answer he could bring back to Maggiar.
But by the beginning of sunset he still saw no fields such as a great hold would need, only this barely flourishing desolation of woods and stony hillsides. He was down to hoping for another tower, like Krukczy Straz. (And another troll, shuffling about the halls in service to Ela's mistress? He was over the boundaries of Maggiar and clearly things here were different.)
Madam, he would say to Karoly's sister—at least he imagined that was how to address a witch—I was with master Karoly, whom, I fear, the goblins ...
... ate? Killed. Killed was far kinder, and he could get immediately to: Master Karoly came to ask your help, my father asks it. Then the witch would say: What exactly do you want me to do? and he would have not an idea in his head: he had no idea what a witch could do, or what she would ask of him—
Because witches asked payment, that was in grandmother's stories, along with trolls and magical waterfalls that made one young a thousand years, and undead creatures that haunted the site of their demise, different than ghosts, and bloodier. . . .
Madam, he would say, if you would help my father and my people—and my brother, if he's still alive . . .
What would he do in return for that? Anything, he said to himself. Anything. Bogdan had left him that duty. Master Karoly had. He was the last of their company and lie had no choices, now that he had gone this far.
Madam, anything at all, if only you'd do something ... if you could do something ...