CHAPTER 28:
LURING THE DRAGON
Illarion’s sword stopped a hair’s width from the bare trunk of the spruce, hovering there at the end of his extended arm. He drew it back, then snapped the blade out again, powering the blow with his hips. With every repeated strike, the faces of his enemies, past and present, swam before his eyes, mingled with the faces of the countless dead, and the more he swung his sword, the more the faces leered at him. The purpose of such practice was not to hack through a tree trunk, but rather to exercise the control necessary to put the sword in the same place, every single time, without fail. Strike hard; strike with control.
His breath fogged in the cold air as he threw himself into the exercise. The blade was older than the ones he’d wielded in the south, single-handed instead of the two-handed longswords that were becoming common in the rest of Europe. He’d been trained with one such as this, years ago at the behest of his father. When he had fought in Onghwe Khan’s diabolical Circus of Swords at Volodymyr, he had defeated several of the Khan’s champions. He knew it well, and so every stroke was as near to perfect as he could make it.
Such practice, however, did not make the faces go away.
“I’ve never seen a man swing a sword so hard and hit so little so many times,” Nika said behind him as he was returning to a ready position. He glanced over his shoulder and noted she was actually smiling. She had, of late, been as somber as he had been on occasion, and he was gladdened to see the return of her acerbic humor.
“I am practicing my restraint,” he said as he straightened and sheathed his sword. “Given our activities of late, restraint is in short supply.”
Almost immediately after his speech in Trinity Church, the Druzhina had begun making preparations to raid into Dorpat. On the one hand, he had felt no compunction about turning them loose, but on the other, he knew the people of Dorpat were innocent of the conflict between the Teutonics and Novgorod. He had selected a dozen older soldiers to lead the raiding parties, and had carefully impressed upon them the distinction between discord and destruction. They were free to show the banners of Rus and to burn homes and fields as they saw fit, but they had to do so with as little bloodshed as possible.
The ruse would not last long, but his hope was that the sudden appearance of the prince’s banner in Dorpat would cause the Prince-Bishop to question Kristaps’s leadership, and according to the few fast-moving scouts he dared send out, it appeared as if the panic was having the desired effect.
Nika held up a folded piece of parchment. “A message from the prince,” she said. “He couches his language very discreetly, but I think he is pleased with your ambition and your willingness to make your own decisions in the field.”
“Is he?” Illarion said as he took the proffered message. He read it quickly, noting the prince’s ability to imply much while saying little of substance. “The Teutonics are marching around the lake,” he said. “It worked.”
“It would appear so,” Nika said. “However, we’re still in Dorpat.” She glanced around the tiny camp. “And the Teutonics are coming.”
“We should not stay long, then,” Illarion said. “The prince suggests we make little effort to disguise our departure, and that we should take the most direct route possible.”
Nika nodded. “I have looked at the maps,” she said. “That route is due east, straight across Lake Peipus, which I am told freezes over in the winter.”
An unexpected shudder ran up Illarion’s spine, and Nika regarded him coolly. “I dreamt of such a lake,” he admitted. “Not two nights past.”
“You and I have seen strange things,” she said, the look in her green eyes becoming unsettling in its intensity. “We have seen the same phantom, which binds us in a way that is not readily dismissed. There can be more to dreams than just old memories that won’t lie still. You know that, and to pretend otherwise is to shame both of us.”
He turned away, fighting to keep the very memories she wanted him to share from filling his mind. They came, ignoring his efforts to forestall them. The twisted tree. The dead knight. The river of dark water. The branding. His left hand reflexively rubbed the place upon his right arm where he’d been marked in his dream.
“I saw the old crone again,” Illarion said. His fingers dug into the flesh of his arm, trying to dig out a wound that wasn’t there. “I saw the old crone. I saw visions of war and death; I walked among the bodies of both friends and enemies; and I felt her touch upon me.” He took a deep breath to master himself. “It was a powerful dream, Nika, but that is all that it was.”
“Then why,” she whispered, “is your arm bleeding?”
He knew what he would see before he looked down. In his agitation, he’d done more than rub the skin raw on his arm. He had torn the flesh. It was not possible that he had ripped his skin in as precise a pattern as was now marked in blood upon his arm, but his eyes told him otherwise. The tiny daggers of pain now lancing up his shoulder told him otherwise. It isn’t real, he argued with himself as he raised his left hand, staring at the bloodied tips of his fingers. It is merely a waking dream.
Nika laid a hand upon his shoulder, and when he looked at her, the frantic fear must have shown in his eyes, for she looked momentarily alarmed, and her grip upon his shoulder tightened. “Listen to me,” she said, “you are not the first to dream of her. There have been others.”
“Madmen,” he answered, “or those soon to be mad.” Perhaps he was mad already, in truth. The shadow of a man once a warrior, now the ghost beside a prince, waiting for a chance to die nobly, or just to die.
“Women of my order,” she insisted. “It is rare, perhaps only once in a generation, but young Skjalddis sometimes dream of the old crone. They do not die, they do not go mad—at least, they do not do so often.” A ghost of the familiar smile flickered across her face, but it did little to dismiss the haunted look in her eyes. “Baba Yaga has long watched the Skjalddis from the shadows,” Nika continued. “When she visits one of us, we listen, for such a visitation is both an honor and a portent. If you have been dreaming of her, Illarion, it is because she is trying to tell you something that you need to hear.”
He shook his head as he wiped his hand across his arm, smearing the pattern of blood into a meaningless shape. The wounds still wept blood, but the flow was sluggish and would soon stop.
“What did she say to you?” Nika asked patiently, and Illarion sighed. She wasn’t going to leave him alone about the dream, and perhaps the burden of it would be lessened if he shared it with another.
So he told her: of the witch woman’s talk of blood and vows; of living and dying again and again. As he spoke, he tried to keep the dreadful fear from his voice, but it crept in regardless. He told her of the mosaic of the knight with the rose in its chest, of his son calling him Ilya, of the black bird made from horsehair, and of the sword that had hurt him. When he was done speaking, his hands were shaking.
Nika said nothing when he finished, and his heart fluttered in his throat. Had he made a dreadful mistake in telling her?
“I think if you tell that story to anyone else, they will think you are mad,” she said, and her words did little to calm his restless heart. “But I believe you.” She leaned against him, her face close to his. Her eyes were bright and clear. “But then, I think I, too, am mad,” she said. “These are not times for people of sound mind. When the world burns, those who stay safe in their houses die first.”
“My house has already burned to the ground,” Illarion admitted with a smile that did not come easily.
“Yet still you live,” Nika said. “The world is not done with you. Or with me,” she sighed as if accepting something she had been resisting for a long time. “You’ve been marked by her,” she continued. “I will not pretend to know why, but I can tell you that for all the terror and dread she inspires, she has never misled those she has advised.”
Illarion looked down at his forearm, and when he wiped the blood away this time, the wounds were nothing more than raised irritations on his skin.
“The mark is as real as you make it,” Nika said. “It is a symbol of a conflict far older than the one in which we currently find ourselves.”
“All wars are,” Illarion said. “Even when it was just boyar fighting boyar over lands or titles, or when it was the Danes or Swedes raiding our lands over a stolen daughter or a murdered son. But that is not the case for this conflict, is it?”
Nika gave a sad smile, and Illarion realized that he’d never once seen her look so tired. “No. It’s older than my order or your Shield-Brethren or their predecessors. It’s older than the stones of Kiev and the lineage of the House of Rurik. I do not know its origin; all I know is that it lies at the heart of the oaths we’ve sworn. It lies at the heart of an old tree that is no more.”
She embraced him lightly, almost awkwardly, but at the same time, he found being enclosed in her arms more comforting than he expected. There was nothing romantic in her gesture; it was more of the comfort brothers and sisters offer one another.
“Let us lead our enemies to the ice,” she said, resting her hands on his shoulders and looking at him directly. “She will show herself to you there, and then you will know what she wants of you.” She offered him a tiny smile, though none of the humor was reflected in her eyes. “We’ll all know what is to be done.”