It was scarcely light outside when master Nikolai roused them out of sleep, gathered up all the things they could use and ordered Yuri to take Gracja's tack and get out of the hall— Karoly, poking up the fire in the fireplace, with no evidence whatsoever of breakfast in preparation, said he would follow, go on, get out, go with Nikolai and Krukczy as far as the gate: he had something yet to do and, no, he did not need help and he did not need boys' stupid questions this morning.
"What's the matter?" Yuri asked Nikolai while they were saddling Gracja. "Are goblins coming? Does he know where Tamas is?"
Master Nikolai said, "Does any wizard make sense, ever?" and ordered him to stop asking questions and go.
So they led Gracja out as far as the gate in the shivery half-light of morning, with Krukczy stumping along like a moving rag-heap, Zadny loping from one to the other of them and around and around Gracja's legs. Yuri found his teeth chattering, and told himself it was not fear that did that, he always did that when he slipped out in the morning cold without breakfast.
But what master Karoly was doing in there must be serious, the way he had snapped at them and wanted them out the doors before he started.
Maybe he was burning the tower down, so the goblins could not use it. He had heard that a general should do that, if a tower was likely to give an enemy a place to hold. But there was all of the forest around the tower, that could catch fire if that was the case, and burn all of them with it.
Surely he's thought of that, Yuri thought to himself, but one never knew about Karoly—sometimes he was fearfully absent-minded.
Maybe instead the old master was laying a curse of demons on the doors and locking the goblins out. Karoly was certainly a stronger wizard than they had ever believed in Mag-giar: Yuri was in retrospect chagrined and on best behavior, thinking he and his friends at home had been lucky Karoly liked them.
"He's taking a long time, isn't he?" Yuri asked. But Nikolai gave him no answer and neither did Krukczy, who was sitting like a brown lump among the vines. Zadny whined and pressed close against his legs, nosing his restraining hands. Zadny was shivering, too, feeling the uneasiness, Yuri thought, the way he felt Nikolai's anxiety.
"Master Nikolai, what's he doing in there?"
"Wizard-work," Nikolai said, his jaw clamped so tight the muscles stood out.
Zadny whined. A wind began to rise. Brush crackled near them—that was Krukczy, heading away from them in a great hurry.
"Troll!" Nikolai said, and made a grab for him. "Krukczy! Troll! Come back here!"
But Krukczy was through the vines and out of their reach.
Came a sudden blast of wind and leaves began to fly and vines to whip about the wall like snakes, blowing loose around the open gateway. Came a dreadful wailing inside the yard, loose boards or something—Tamas had always said that was what made sounds like that in the night. It was loose boards.
Or owls. It might be owls.
Gracja tried suddenly to bolt. Nikolai hung on to her reins as she rolled her eyes and tried to stand on her hind legs. Then light burst inside the gates, light bright as noonday flooding out over the paving stones, casting the skulls and the poles into eerie shadow, as if the sun had invaded the tower. Wind shrieked. Dust flew into their faces and stung their eyes. It wasn't owls. It wasn't boards creaking. It was the shriek of iron bending, it was a roaring like flood coming down, it was cold, and the thump of loose shutters and banging pails and the gate hitting the wall.
"Come on," Nikolai shouted, starting to lead Gracja away. Gracja was more than willing to go, to run over him if she had her way—but, Yuri thought in dismay, they were deserting master Karoly, leaving him in that place with that banging and shrieking going on: and Nikolai would not do that. "Wait!" Yuri cried, "wait! He said—"
Nikolai only grabbed him by the arm, holding Gracja with his other hand, and yelled, above the wind, "Get on the horse!"
"We can't leave him!" he cried, but Nikolai yelled louder: "Get on the damn horse, boy, it's Karoly's business in there-he told me he'll follow us!"
He was used to moving when Nikolai yelled at him in that tone—his feet began to move, without his even thinking; and then he drew another breath to argue right and wrong. But whatever-it-was shrieked around the walls, scattering gravel from the crest, and Gracja was struggling to break away from them.
"It's wizard's business!" Nikolai yelled into his ear. "Get up on the horse and stay out of it!"
He found the stirrup and got on, while Nikolai held her—
Nikolai did not give him the reins; he began to lead her instead, while she was trying to get free and ran. Bits of twigs and leaves were flying around them, Nikolai was hurting himself trying to run and hold on against Gracja's wild-eyed fright, and he could only duck down and try not to let a branch rake him off.
He hoped master Karoly was all right, he hoped Nikolai knew where he was going, he hoped—
He hoped they would only get to somewhere quiet and warm, because the wind was more than cold, it had the chill of earth and stone and it cut to the bone.
"He's in trouble in there!" he objected to Nikolai: if Nikolai had more confidence than that in master Karoly, he did not. But Nikolai kept them moving until they had left the stone wall behind. Then he gave up running, only limped along at Gracja's head in a wind-tossed dawn.
Zadny was still with them, Gracja had run her fright out, but anything could scare her into another panic; and Yuri had a cold lump of guilt lying at the pit of his stomach because he had been a boy and a burden. Nikolai had had to protect him, instead of helping master Karoly, Krukczy had run off from them, and Nikolai was doing the best he knew to get them somewhere—he began to understand that master Karoly had given Nikolai orders: Get the fool boy to safety, was probably what Karoly had said.
He slid off Gracja's back as she was still moving, hit the ground at Nikolai's heels. "Master Nikolai. You ride. You shouldn't have been running ..."
Nikolai gave him a look in the cold daylight, a drawn and dreadful glare—'run' was a sore word with Nikolai right now, he realized that the instant it was too late to swallow it.
He amended it, with a knot in his throat, "I know you'd have stayed if I wasn't there."
Nikolai kept walking, all the while casting him foul looks. "Maybe I wouldn't," Nikolai said. "Damned wizards shove you here and there and don't ask your leave ... Who's got a choice? Who's got a bloody choice, lately?"
"He magicked us to go?"
"He did or common sense did," Nikolai said. "Get back on that horse, boy. Get on!"
Nikolai made Gracja stop. Nikolai's pride was sorer right now than his arm was and it was not a good time to argue the point: Yuri scrambled back into the saddle and shut up, but it grew clear in his head that Nikolai had all along been put to bad choices. Nikolai would have gone after Tamas to the ends of the earth, if he could have, but he could never have made it alone.
And if wizards and witches were at work, it was a good job that Zadny had broken that rope, because otherwise Nikolai would be dead on the hill at Krukczy Tower, and Tamas would not have any help at all, that was the way he added it up—so he was not all to blame for things.
And, more to the point, Zadny had found a trail, running along with his nose to the ground, blundering into this thicket and that bramble, as if the wind, gentler once they were past the walls, were playing him tricks, but he was clearly onto something.
"He's following them," he said to Nikolai. "Tamas went this way—Zadny wouldn't follow, else."
"Good," Nikolai panted, not in good humor.
And finally: "Maybe we should slow down for Karoly," Yuri said, when Nikolai was well out of breath. "You said he was going to follow us. ..."