Prince Ivan (31 page)

Baba Yaga stood in the doorway and stared down at him, and she held someone’s newly-severed head by the hair and ears. “They come for horses,” she said. “Sometimes they work, but not well enough. Sometimes they steal, but not well enough. They come from many different places, but the place where they go is always the same. Up!”

The hut rose still higher, standing almost on tiptoe as Baba Yaga shifted her grip on the head. She tested the point of a stake with her thumb, then rammed the neck-stump down on top with a sound like crushing a fresh juicy apple underfoot. Baba Yaga patted the head as if it had done something clever, then chucked it under the chin.

“Down!” she said. The hut settled low, then lower, and became just a hut on the ground. Baba Yaga glanced up at the stake and said, “Pretty,” then looked at Ivan’s head and said, “Prettier still.”

It wasn’t a word he could have used about her. Baba Yaga dressed like a peasant
babushka
and leaned on her fence like a gossipy grandmother, but she looked like a nightmare and was.

Her straggly wisps of hair were snow-white, the white of old soiled snow that has lain for a week in a city’s main street, and it was as busy with lice as that city with people. She was warty and shrivelled and hunched, and even with his nose already clogged by the reek of the dreadful fence, Ivan still flinched from her smell. Her nose was hooked like a sickle, curved down to a mouth without lips that was only a slash in the seamed skin of her face; yet somehow that mouth contrived to shape a smile.

“Yes,” she said through that smile, “perhaps the prettiest of all.” Baba Yaga reached out one bony hand and pinched his cheek. “And the sweetest.” The smile became a grin, and her teeth were grey except where they were rusty, for they were indeed made of iron. Ivan didn’t want to think of how those teeth came by their rust, but the evidence was all about him. “So what brings such a pretty morsel to my humble home?”

“I’ve come,” said Ivan as boldly as he could, “to earn a horse.”

“Indeed? Then you can start from tomorrow, Prince Ivan, since today’s too well past. And you can sleep in the stable, so they can get to know you. But from the looks of you, and the sounds your guts are making—” Ivan blushed and rubbed his stomach, “—you should eat before you sleep.”

She went into the hut while Ivan fought down his desire to run away, and when she came back there was a bowl and a platter in her hands. The bowl held steaming wheaten
kasha
with a hunk of black bread on top, and there was meat on the platter. “Eat,” she said, “and then sleep sound. Don’t worry; you’ll come to no harm, that I promise you. Not until you fail.” Ivan looked at the food, and then at Baba Yaga, and made his thanks as courteously as if she had offered him a royal feast. “Just a little something to make you fatter,” she said and laughed. “I hate lean meat.” Then she went into her hut again, and closed the door.

Ivan stared at the hut for several seconds, then walked across the awful clearing to the long, low stable in the shadow of the trees. It was full of handsome horses, all staring at him with as much amusement as a horse can ever show. Ivan looked at them, already wondering which one would cause most trouble, and which one he would choose, and then sat down on the ground to eat his food.

The black bread was a good sour rye such as he’d seen before, so he ate it without a second thought, and the
kasha
too. But not the meat. It smelt as savoury as good roast pork but, after what Baba Yaga had said and seeing that fresh head on its spike, he would have left this meat well alone even without the queen bee’s warning buzzing in his mind. Not caring whether the old hag could see him or not, he dug a little hole beside the stable wall and buried every piece of it.

Tsarevich Ivan lay awake for a long time that night, with his eyes wide open, staring at the dark, and every time he thought of the next day, he shivered.

CHAPTER NINE

Concerning
Baba
Yaga’s
country
beyond
the
fiery
river
,
and
how
Prince
Ivan
guarded
her
herd
of
horses

Koshchey the Undying wanted to die.

It wasn’t a sincere wish, as such wishes sometimes went; but on the morning after he’d so rashly tried to drink Mar’ya Morevna underneath the table, he woke up with a pounding in his head that felt like the very wrath of God. He was sick in his stomach, and giddy in his brain, and there was a taste and feeling in his mouth as though Tatars had been camping there. Death would have been far preferable. At least dead people weren’t hung over. Though he tried throughout the morning to go about his business, there was no point to it, and at last he lay back groaning on his bed, the window-shutters and his eyes both closed tight to keep the sunlight from scorching hot holes through his skull.

Mar’ya Morevna had made matters worse, for instead of creeping about and groaning as he had done, she’d been bright and merry. Appallingly so. For one thing, she’d picked that day to sing. Koshchey had seen her, and what was far worse, heard her.

Mar’ya Morevna was indeed the fairest Princess in all the Russias, but there had never been a rule that beauty of face meant beauty of voice. She had a fine contralto, but no one had ever trained its ragged edges, and yelling orders to her armies above the roar of battle had done nothing to improve its sweetness. But it was good enough for Mar’ya Morevna, and what she lacked in quality she enhanced with volume.

She sang as she took her morning walk along the ramparts of the kremlin, which was acceptable enough since much of the music dispersed out on the open air to frighten passing birds. But she continued to sing as she clattered about the tiles and floorboards of the kremlin in a pair of red-heeled boots that struck the echoes back and forth from every wall, and whenever she came to a door, she slammed it. Koshchey could hear the slamming now as she worked her way along the halls below his chamber, making sure that each door swung smoothly on its hinges and could close just as quick and hard as her strong right arm could push it.

Koshchey the Undying rolled moaning onto his queasy belly, and pulled the pillows and the bolster down around his ears.

*

That morning Ivan was awake before Baba Yaga began to stir. Despite her promise that he would be safe until he failed in whatever tasks she chose to set him, he felt uncomfortable about being asleep while she was creeping about. Ivan had spent an uneasy, restless night with one hand on the hilt of his sword, and had learned yet another truth that the old stories didn’t mention. All of the heroes who slept that way woke refreshed, but he had barely slept at all, and the only parts that
had
gone to sleep were the muscles of his sword-arm. He sat in the straw of the stable, rubbing pins and needles from his fingers and well aware that Baba Yaga’s horses were staring at him with the expression of people enjoying a malicious private joke at his expense.

He stared right back at them, thinking of Koshchey’s riding-whip still through his belt and knowing from experience that besides being magic, it was also a good whip. The horses seemed to know what he was thinking, and several of them curled back their upper lips in either an equine sneer or a deliberate display of teeth as big and yellow as those of any other horse but far more sharply pointed.

Ivan looked at the teeth, and though they weren’t the dreadful iron teeth in Baba Yaga’s rat-trap mouth, he wondered what these horses ate apart from grass and hay. Horses that ate men weren’t unknown in the old stories, and he’d seen enough already that his doubts about anything any more were well set aside. Herding horses like these might prove more difficult than he suspected, and he was glad to have his sword as well as Koshchey’s whip.

Baba Yaga flung the stable door wide open. Whether it was just to waken him or an attempt to catch him sleeping, Ivan didn’t know. What he did know was that he’d seen more pleasant things first thing in the morning. She looked no more beautiful in the thin, sharp sunshine of dawn than she had looked in the warm light of evening and, as he stood up, Ivan made sure his sword was in plain sight.

Baba Yaga looked at the sword, then at him, and smiled with all her frightful teeth. “Ah, Prince Ivan,” she said, “your sword won’t help you herd my horses well, and it won’t save you if you herd them badly. Why not leave it with me, safe from harm?”

Ivan grinned an unpleasant little grin at Baba Yaga. He saw no more reason for politeness than did she, since every conversation they’d exchanged had been a sort of fencing match. Baba Yaga would kill and eat him if she got the chance, and Ivan was determined that she wouldn’t
get
such a chance. That was why he grinned; and why he slapped the scabbard of his sabre so that the sharp-edged curve of metal within it clinked and rattled ominously. “Thank you, Grandmother,” he said, “but I prefer to keep it close to hand. That way we both stay safe from harm. It was a present from my brothers, and they’d be displeased if I didn’t carry it as they intended.
All
the
time
.”

Baba Yaga’s smile faded. “Then carry it,” she said. “But take care it doesn’t weigh you down, for you’ll find you need to run a lot when you herd my horses.”

“Perhaps, and perhaps not. Horse-herders ride, the better to keep up with their charges. So which one do I take?” Ivan spoke with less courtesy than he would normally use towards an old lady, even one as repulsive as Baba Yaga. Mar’ya Morevna had been unable to learn how Koshchey the Undying gained his horse, but Ivan would wager gold that it hadn’t been through sweetness and asking nicely.

Baba Yaga glowered at him from under her bristly white eyebrows. Her hooked nose and wispy-bearded chin were close to meeting in the middle, and her lipless mouth pressed so tightly shut that it all but disappeared. “Your manners aren’t what they might be, Prince Ivan,” she said at last. “Beware your sharp tongue doesn’t cut your throat!”

“I merely act as present company dictates,” said Ivan, not much disturbed by yet another threat and sure he still had better manners than Koshchey, when Old Rattlebones was here on the self-same business. “‘
If
you
live
with
the wolves’
, says the proverb, ‘
then
howl
like
the
wolves
.”

He thought of the wolf he had encountered in the forest, and realized that despite how grim and dangerous she was, he would rather be in her company than that of Baba Yaga. At least Mother Wolf smelt clean.

The red glare in Baba Yaga’s eyes was almost enough to set the stable straw on fire. There was an ugly promise in the way she looked at him, that he would beg for the mercy of the carving-knife and cook-pot before she was done. “If we’re to bandy proverbs, little Prince, then you should have remembered this one: ‘
If
you
find
yourself
in
a
pack
of
dogs
,
bark
or
don’t
bark
,
but
always
wag
your
tail
.’ ”

Ivan shook his head. “Would tail-wagging like a submissive cur change your intentions for me, Baba Yaga? And would it help me at all if I started now? No, for preference I’ll howl and show my teeth.”

“Oh, you’ll howl before your course is run, Prince Ivan,” said Baba Yaga, grinding her iron teeth together. “You’ll howl indeed.”

“Enough of that!” snapped Ivan with no more pretence at courtesy, his tone now that of a Tsar’s son speaking to a dirty peasant. “I asked before: which horse do I ride when herding the rest?”

“Take your pick, Prince Ivan.” She indicated the horses, who’d been watching their exchange of barely-veiled insults with every sign of amusement. “My rules are very simple, so simple that even you should remember them. You’ll serve me for three full days. On each of those days all my horses must be back in their stalls by sunset, or your head goes on a spike,” she licked her lips, “and I’ll serve
you
.”

Ivan had known more or less what she would say ever since the horrid fence and palisade around the clearing. He had thought that when the words were finally spoken they would be no more than words, but he was wrong. His stomach gave a little flutter, and a shudder went crawling down his spine as if what Baba Yaga said had come as a complete surprise. Perhaps it was the look on her face, or her eagerness – or just the way a trail of drool ran down her chin.

He selected a horse, and even though a Prince and Tsar’s son might have ridden the best of them, he chose one of the mares rather than the stallion of the herd. Tsarevich Ivan had been taught horsemanship and weapon-craft by Guard-Captain Akimov, who was Don Cossack on his father’s side and Kuban Cossack on his mother’s. Given how the Cossacks fought each other, that had surely been a marriage and alliance forged on the hottest hearths of Hell.

It was from his parents that Guard-Captain Petr Mikhailovich Akimov learnt the arts of fighting and survival – by all accounts his home life had been an education in itself – but it had been from his other relatives on both sides, those not involved in feuding, that he’d learned to handle horses. The Cossacks could ride anything on four legs, and equally they knew what sort of mount to avoid. Solitary stallions, masters of a herd of mares, were one such. Ivan had been warned, time and again, that even ordinary stallions could be notoriously intractable and vicious. Baba Yaga’s herd-leader, as intelligent as all the rest, was most likely actively malevolent. A quiet little mare would be good enough.