Vasya had kept Solovey near the back of the cavalcade, but now she found herself smiling. “Hold on,” she told Katya. Taking a firmer grip on the children, she nudged Solovey. The horse, delighted, broke into a gallop.
So the last distance to Katya’s village was covered with Vasilisa Petrovna and the Grand Prince of Moscow galloping side by side. The cries grew louder and louder as the riders approached, and then a single woman, standing upright and alone, cried, “Anyushka!” The horses leaped the half-cleared remains of the palisade, and then they were surrounded.
Solovey stood still while the two little ones were handed down into the arms of weeping women.
Blessings rained down on the riders; screams and prayers and cries of “Dmitrii Ivanovich!” and “Aleksandr Peresvet!”
“Vasilii the Brave,” Katya told the villagers. “He saved us all.”
The villagers took up the cry. Vasya glared, and Katya smiled. Then the girl froze. A single woman had not come out to join the crowd. She stood apart from the rest, barely visible in the shadow of her izba.
“Mother,” Katya breathed, in a voice that sent a jolt of unlooked-for pain through Vasya. Then Katya slid down Solovey’s flank and was running.
The woman opened her arms and caught her daughter to her. Vasya did not see. It hurt to look. She looked instead at the door of the izba. Just in the doorway stood the small, sturdy domovoi, with ember eyes and twig-fingers and grinning face all covered with soot.
It was just a glimpse. Then the crowd surged and the domovoi disappeared. But Vasya thought she saw one small hand, raised in salute.
14.
The City Between Rivers
“Well,” said Dmitrii, with relish, when the forest had swallowed Katya’s village and they rode again on unmarked snow. “You have played the hero, Vasya; all well and good. But enough of coddling children; we must hurry on now.” A pause. “I think your horse agrees with me.”
Solovey was bucking amiably, pleased with the sun after a week of snow, and pleased to have the weight of three people off his back.
“He certainly does,” Vasya panted. “Mad thing,” she added to the horse in exasperation. “Will you attempt to walk now?”
Solovey deigned to come to earth, but instead of bucking, he pranced and kicked until Vasya leaned forward to glare into one unrepentant eye. “For heaven’s sake,” she said, while Dmitrii laughed.
They rode until dark that day, and their pace only increased as the week wore on. The men ate their bread in the dark and rode from first light until shadows swallowed the trees. They followed woodcutters’ paths and broke trail when they had to. The snow was crusted on top, a deep powder beneath, and it was heavy going. After a week, only Solovey, of all the horses, was bright-eyed and light of foot.
On the last night before Moscow, darkness caught them in the shelter of trees, just on the bank of the Moskva. Dmitrii called the halt, peering down at the expanse of river. The moon was waning by then, and troubled clouds smothered the stars. “Better camp here,” said the prince. “Easy riding tomorrow and home by midmorning.” He slid off his horse, buoyant still, though he had lost weight in the long days. “A good measure of mead tonight,” he added, raising his voice. “And perhaps our warrior-monk will have caught rabbits for us.”
Vasya dismounted with the others and broke the ice from Solovey’s whiskers. “Moscow tomorrow,” she whispered to him, with jumping heart and cold hands. “Tomorrow!”
Solovey arched his neck, untroubled, and shoved her with his nose. Have you any bread, Vasya?
She sighed, unsaddled him, rubbed him down, fed him a crust, and left him to nose about for grass under the snow. There was wood to chop, and snow to scrape away, a fire to build, a sleeping-trench to dig. The men all called her Vasya now; they teased her as they worked. She had found, to her surprise, that she could give as good as she got, in the coin of their rough humor.
They were all laughing when Sasha returned. Three dead rabbits swung from his hand and an unstrung bow lay over his shoulder. The men raised a cheer, blessed him, and set the meat to stewing. The flames of their campfires leaped bravely now, and the men passed skins of mead and waited for their supper.
Sasha went to where Vasya was digging her sleeping-trench. “Is all well with you?” he asked her, a little stiffly. He had never quite settled on a tone to use with his brother-who-was-really-his-sister.
Vasya grinned roguishly at him. His bemused but determined effort to keep her safe on the road had eased her gnawing loneliness. “I’d like to sleep on an oven, and eat stew that someone else made,” she said. “But I am well, brother.”
“Good,” said Sasha. His gravity jarred after the men’s jokes. He handed her a little stained bundle. She unwrapped the raw livers of the three rabbits, dark with blood.
“God bless you,” Vasya managed before she bit into the first. The sweet-salt-metal life taste exploded across her tongue. Behind her Solovey squealed; he disliked the smell of blood. Vasya ignored him.
Her brother slipped away before she finished. Vasya watched him go, licking her fingers, wondering how she might ease the growing worry in his face.
She finished digging, and sank down onto a log drawn near the fire. Chin on fist, she watched Sasha as he blessed the men, blessed their meat, and drank his mead, inscrutable, on the other side of the flames. Sasha spoke no word when the blessings were done; even Dmitrii had begun to remark how silent Brother Aleksandr had been since the Lavra.
He is troubled, of course, Vasya thought, because I am dressed as a boy, and I fought bandits, and he has lied to the Grand Prince. But we had no choice, Brother—
“Quite the hero, your brother,” said Kasyan, breaking into her thoughts. He sat down beside her and offered her his skin of mead.
“Yes,” replied Vasya, with some sharpness. “Yes, he is.” There was something almost—not quite—mocking, in Kasyan’s voice. She did not take the honey-wine.
Kasyan seized her mittened hand and slapped the vessel into it. “Drink,” he said. “I meant no insult.”
Vasya hesitated, then drank. She still had not gotten used to this man: to his secret eyes and sudden laughter. His face had perhaps paled a little, with the week of travel, but that only made the colors of him more vivid. She would meet his glance at odd moments, and fight down a blush, though she had never been a girl for simpering. How would he react, she sometimes found herself wondering, if he knew I was a girl?
Don’t think of it. He will never know.
The silence between them stretched out, but he made no move to go. To break it, Vasya asked, “Have you been to Moscow before, Kasyan Lutovich?”
His lips quirked. “I came to Moscow not long after the year turned, to rally the Grand Prince to my cause. But before that? Once. Long ago.” An arid suggestion of feeling just tinged his voice. “Perhaps every young fool goes seeking his heart’s desire in cities. I never went back, until this winter.”
“What was your heart’s desire, Kasyan Lutovich?” Vasya asked.
He gave her a look of good-natured scorn. “Are you my grandmother now? You are showing your small years, Vasilii Petrovich. What do you think? I loved a woman.”
Across the fire, Sasha’s head turned.
Dmitrii had been making jokes and watching the stew like a cat at a mouse-hole (their rations did not suit his appetite), but he overheard and spoke first. “Did you, Kasyan Lutovich?” he asked interestedly. “A Muscovite woman?”
“No,” said Kasyan, speaking now to the listening company. His voice was soft. “She came from far away. She was very beautiful.”
Vasya bit her lower lip. Kasyan usually kept to himself. He was silent more often than speaking, except that he and Dmitrii sometimes rode side by side, passing a companionable wineskin. But now everyone was listening.