Prince Ivan (34 page)

Mar’ya Morevna was pretty and clever – and as crafty as a whole earth of foxes – but now she became solicitous, bringing him bread and soup and great cups brimming with vodka as a morning-after drink to ease his head. Those over-large cupfuls also served to keep him drunk, and put him back to sleep, as one more part of her plan. Certainly Koshchey was willing enough to have his beautiful prisoner bring him food and drink as he lay moaning softly with the shutters drawn, but less willing when in an all-too-frequent while she chanced to drop the metal tray on which those things were carried.

On such occasions, her own head and headache quite recovered, Mar’ya Morevna would watch him with cold eyes and assess his reaction to the great shrill clangour as the tray bounced from the floor. When he screeched weakly, squeezed his eyes tight shut and hid beneath the pillows, she was content; but when he merely groaned and seemed to suffer less anguish than before, then on her next visit she made sure to bring him quantities of liquor and stand to one side with arms folded and foot tapping until he drank it down.

She knew, as any general might, that such a transparent stratagem was too obvious to last; but while it did it bought Ivan many extra hours of time.

*

There was a long coil of heavy rope hung on a hook behind the stable door, and after he arose and worked the kinks and creaks out of his spine, Ivan cut it into lengths and knotted them into thick hobbles for each horse’s legs. When he was done, the knots of the hobble-loops were each as big as his fist, with just enough slack rope between them for the horse to move at a walk. It was sufficient for an animal intending nothing more than grazing in the meadow, but most certainly not enough for one which planned to run away.

Putting the hobbles on was the most dangerous part of the business, for it meant he had to go close either to the end which kicked or the end which bit, but he managed it at last. Tsarevich Ivan was no longer the blue-eyed innocent who had ridden from Khorlov in search of adventure; he’d found adventure enough, and it had taught him that one way to survive such an adventure was to be more crafty than his enemies. That was why he tied the knots as he had done; they were large and clumsy, but worked like any other slip-knot, by closing and not letting go. One loop was all he needed to fit around a given horse’s leg, with movements not as far removed from fishing. The other loop went on the stable floor, and when the horse set its other front or hind foot in the circle – which in the confined space of each stall happened sooner instead of later – Ivan caught up the slack with a rake and pulled all snug and tight.

It occupied him busily until all of the horses were secured, even the stallion, and even then he was well finished before Baba Yaga got out of her bed. She threw open the stable door and waited for her horse-herd to come pouring out, then stared in astonishment as they came instead with their legs tied together, treading carefully as dowagers.

“Your mares proved rather skittish yesterday,” said Ivan blandly, at some pains to keep a smile from his face, “so I decided to curb their high spirits.”

“Indeed,” said Baba Yaga, giving him another pack of bread and cheese. “You’re quite the clever one, Prince Ivan. Beware of that; they say too much cleverness is unhealthy, and shortens the life.”

“Being stupid has the same effect, and far more often,” said Ivan, thinking of the several times he’d said and done things without thinking of the consequences till those consequences caught him by the throat. “I should know.”

Baba Yaga sneered at him and smiled with all her teeth, but said nothing and instead returned to the hut on hen’s legs, where she went back to bed beside the stove and snored until sunset or dinnertime, whichever should come first.

Ivan watched her go, then turned and began to drive the mares along the forest path towards the pasture meadow. This time, not trusting even the littlest and quietest mare in Baba Yaga’s herd, he walked. It was a slow business in the warm morning air, for the horses milled together, stumbling in their hobbles and complaining constantly with snorts and neighing. Ivan was relieved they didn’t use human speech for more than the occasional curse, because he had no wish to hear what horses such as these might have to talk about. They would have seen and eaten far too many foul things for their conversation to be any different.

Then one of the horses on the far side of the herd broke into a gallop, charging down the path and out of sight.

Ivan’s blood ran cold. He hadn’t seen how that mare had slipped her hobbles, but slipped them she had, or she would have gone hock over pastern at the first attempt to run. Now it was Ivan’s turn to run, as he hurried round the herd in an attempt to find out what had happened. He all but tripped over the answer, and for a moment had no idea what he was looking at. Then the picture slipped into place, and he recognized what had begun the morning as a rope hobble with great twisted knots. Now the knots were chewed away, and the rope itself so frayed that it was little more than a soggy lump of hempen fibre. And Ivan remembered too late what apprehension had forced to the back of his mind: the great sharp teeth of Baba Yaga’s horses.

A set of those teeth snapped at his face as the herd stallion warned him back from interfering. More of the mares, those that had been out of plain sight until he moved, were chewing at their ropes even as he watched. Those hobbled by the front legs freed themselves then went to the aid of those whose hind legs were secured, and before more than a minute had passed, all the time he’d spent that morning was wasted as the horse-herd ran free. This time they didn’t linger to laugh and mock but set off at a thundering gallop, spattering him with clods of earth thrown up by their frisking heels.

It was very quiet when they were gone, quiet enough that Prince Ivan could hear the blood rushing in his own ears. He listened through that whisper of sound, but could hear nothing else: no hoofs, no birdsong, no buzz of insects. He stood in the middle of the forest path and felt the oppressive stillness of the place sweep over him. It was a stillness that he might have enjoyed at another time, for the low sun of early morning slanted between the trees in bars of golden light, sparkling with tiny motes of dust. He’d been in Khorlov’s cathedral when it felt and looked like this, a time and place for introspection and quiet thought. Ivan’s thoughts were introspective, but far from quiet; they assailed him with all the doubts that he had set aside, and all the questions for which the answer would be brutally simple.

It would be either life or death.

There were no birds flitting across the sky, nor any distant howl of hunting wolves, nor even the soporific drone of bees blundering among the plants. Despite his earlier bravado Ivan felt the first small tickle of returning fear. If he had reckoned wrongly and placed too much reliance on the return of favours done, he was in grave trouble.

Except that with what Baba Yaga had in mind, there wouldn’t even be a grave.

*

Ivan sat moodily on a tree-stump at the edge of the pasture meadow, watching the sky flush pink with sunset as he slowly, with obsessive care, put a last and lethal edge to his sabre. Ivan had tried to sleep during the warmth of the afternoon, but lacking yesterday’s exhaustion and filled as he was with anticipated rescue from an unknown source, true restful sleep had eluded him.

Instead, as the sun dipped far enough behind the westernmost trees to send long fingers of shadow groping out towards him, he had come back with a jolt from a muttering, uneasy doze to find himself alone. No birds, no beasts, no bees, and certainly no mares to lead back to the stable. That was when he decided that if Baba Yaga wanted his head, she would buy it dearly. He had found a place along the edges of the meadow where the trees grew close and nothing could come at him from behind, then he had taken his whetstone from the pocket of his belt and settled down to wait for the adventure that God sent.

He had been there for almost an hour, waiting, watching the sky change as the sun settled towards a horizon he couldn’t see, and working on his sabre’s blade. It had been keen before he started; now it had a silvery sheen that would reflect like a mirror if fined with a leather strop, and its point didn’t taper so much as fade away. Some swords were sharp enough to shave with; this one could shave the north wind on Midwinter’s Day and leave the snow it carried melting on the ground. Whether that would suffice for Baba Yaga remained to be seen, but from the colour of the sky, the time of testing would come soon enough.

Then small wings whirred in the cooling air, and small claws closed on Ivan’s wrist, prickling the skin, and the mother bird perched there, bright and brownand the small golden tuft atop her head looked more than ever like a Tsaritsa’s crown. She tilted her head and looked at him as she had looked before, first with one bright eye and then the other.

“Prince Ivan!” she chirped, bobbing him a little bow that set her swaying on his wrist, “I promised I would help you when you least expected it!”

Ivan released his pent-up breath in a long gasp that set the small bird swaying even more, and indeed came close to blowing her back into the air. “Best of birds,” he said, “I’d almost stopped expecting anything save Baba Yaga, hunting for my head. Since you were coming after all, could you not have come a little sooner in the day?”

“No,” said the bird, “I could not. I owe you but one service for the lives of my children, Prince Ivan. Had my people set about them with our beaks too early, they would have left the lake as they’re doing even now, and run back to Baba Yaga’s stable. But she would have sent them out again for the rest of the day, and if driven home once more by your third and final obligation, there would be no aid for tomorrow’s herding. Tomorrow’s sunset would have seen your head set on a spike!”

“I understand, and I thank you for it.” Ivan hadn’t realized that this return of favours was timed as tightly as the manoeuvring of troops in battle. Now he understood indeed, and with the protective paw of grim grey Mother Wolf hanging over him, tomorrow was suddenly free of doubt and fear.

The mother bird stared at him very hard for several seconds, as if she could see his deepest thoughts and disapproved of them. It was a look very like some Ivan had received from his father, and from High Steward Strel’tsin long ago. Then she fluttered her wings in a gesture very like a tiny shrug, sprang into the air and hovered there a moment, holding station like a kestrel-hawk.

“Don’t presume too much from our aid, Prince Ivan,” she said sharply. “You’re not the first to think Baba Yaga can be bested by strength of purpose and worth of cause. You can see the others as you pass her fence. Now get back quickly to the hut with hen’s legs, and as you love Mar’ya Morevna, keep your ears open and your head down!”

The bird circled once then flew away and, unless Ivan’s ears deceived him, she was laughing.

Baba Yaga wasn’t laughing. Indeed, he could hear her not laughing from even further down the path than before, and once again he paused to listen. The horses had followed Baba Yaga’s instructions, and had gone to the lake that lay beyond the forest boundaries; but there they’d been attacked not by bees, but by a great flock of birds that had followed them as they tried to take refuge in the deepest water. They’d ducked below the surface and gained a little respite from the pecking, stabbing beaks, but those beaks had still been there when they came up for breath. Their choice had been simple and threefold: swim and be blinded, duck and drown, or run for home. They had run. Ivan’s grin grew wider still, then went away as he concealed it when he approached the stable door. Just out of sight, he paused, listening to hear how Baba Yaga would instruct her mares for the next day. He wasn’t disappointed.

“I can see where the bees stung you,” she said, “and I can see where you were pecked. But what I can’t see is why you came back here each time. When you were stung, you should have run straight to the lake! When the birds pursued you, you should have taken cover in the deep forest where they can’t follow in such numbers! So hear me well for the morrow: shelter straight away among the trees and don’t come back until sunset! I want Prince Ivan’s head, to requite him for the times he’s insulted me, and whether with your help or not, I’ll have it!” Her voice had risen with her passion until she screamed loudly enough to be heard back in the meadow.

Ivan had been grinning at her useless fury, knowing that the deep wood was just where the wolves would want the horses sent, but at her last words the grin went sour and crooked before fading altogether. He began to understand just what the bird had meant when she said that Baba Yaga was not easily defeated. Because she was prepared to cheat. Ivan took a deep breath so he would sound calmer than he felt, and then looked in through the stable doorway.

The horses were the first things to meet his eye, and they no longer looked quite so magnificent as they had done when first he saw them; not only were their skins still as bumpy as that of a fresh-plucked duck with the swellings from the bee-stings yesterday, but now their heads had the look of being curry-combed with a bramble bush. Baba Yaga looked no better. She was purple in the face with rage and frustration and her stringy white hair was coming down. Ivan paid no heed to her appearance, but inclined his head in greeting as she swung round to glare at him.

“Good evening, Baba Yaga,” he said. “All twenty-one of your horses are back in their stable, and I’ve but a single day to serve before I choose my prize.”

Baba Yaga didn’t trust herself to speak. Instead she ground her iron teeth together so hard that in the gloom of the stable Ivan could see them striking sparks from one another. Then she flung back the door with a jarring crash before he could move to hold it open for her, and stamped past him without so much as a curse or threat. Ivan was relieved, for he had a feeling that if she started, she wouldn’t stop at merely cursing him. Tomorrow night would be the most perilous of the three.