by Naomi Novik
“Mama,” the little girl said.
“Be quiet,” the boy told her, his voice trembling. I covered my mouth with both my hands and crammed in a sob.
Alosha was dragging in heavy, labored breaths; blood bubbled on her lips. She sagged against the bed. I stumbled forward and reached for her, but she waved me back. She made a hooking gesture with a hand and said, “Hatol,” and drew the killing sword out of the air. She held the hilt out to me. “Whatever’s in the Wood,” she said, hoarse and whispering, her voice eaten by the fire. “Find it and kill it. Before it’s too late.”
I took it and held it awkwardly. Alosha was sliding to the floor even as she let it go into my hands. I knelt down beside her. “We have to get the Willow,” I said.
She shook her head, a tiny movement. “Go. Get the children out of here,” she said. “The castle’s not safe. Go.” She let her head sink back against the bed, her eyes closing. Her chest rose and fell only in shallow breaths.
I stood up, shaking. I knew she was right. I felt it. The king, the crown prince; now the princess. The Wood meant to kill all of them, Alosha’s good kings, and slaughter Polnya’s wizards, too. I looked at the dead soldiers in their Rosyan uniforms. Marek would blame Rosya again, as he was meant to do. He’d put on his crown and march east, and after he’d spent our army slaughtering as many Rosyans as he could, the Wood would devour him, too, and leave the country torn apart, the succession broken.
I was in the Wood again, underneath the boughs, that cold hateful presence watching me. The momentary silence in the room was only its pause for breath. Stone walls and sunlight meant nothing. The Wood’s eyes were on us. The Wood was here.
Chapter 25
We wrapped ourselves in torn cloaks we took off the dead guards and ran for it, our hems leaving streaks of blood on the floor behind us. I had shoved Alosha’s sword back into its strange waiting-place, hatol opening a pocket in the world for me to put it in. Kasia carried the little girl and I held Stashek’s hand. We went down a tower staircase, past a landing where two men in a hallway glanced over at us, puzzled and frowning; we hurried on down another turning, fast, and came into the narrow hallway to the kitchens, servants going back and forth. Stashek tried to pull back from me. “I want my father!” he said, his voice trembling. “I want Uncle Marek! Where are we going?”
I didn’t know. I was only in flight; all I knew was we had to get away. The Wood had scattered too many seeds, all around us; they’d lain quiet in fallow ground, but now they were all coming to fruit. Nowhere was safe when corruption lived in the king’s castle. The princess had meant to take them to her parents, to Gidna on the northern sea. The ocean is inimical to corruption, Alosha had said. But trees still grew in Gidna, and the Wood would pursue the children to the shore.
“To the tower,” I said. I didn’t plan on saying it; the words came out of me like Stashek’s cry. I wanted the stillness of Sarkan’s library, the faint spice-and-sulfur smell of his laboratory; those close, narrow hallways, the clean lines and the emptiness. The tower standing tall and lonely against the mountains. The Wood had no foothold there. “We’re going to the Dragon’s tower.”
Some of the servants were slowing, looking at us. There were footsteps on the stairs coming after us; a man called down with authority, “You, there!”
“Hold on to me,” I told Kasia. I put my hand on the castle wall and whispered us through, straight out into the kitchen gardens, one staring gardener kneeling up from the dirt. I ran between rows of beanstakes with Stashek wide-eyed running with me, catching our fear; Kasia ran behind us. We reached the outer wall of heavy brick; I took us through. The castle bells began to clang alarm behind us as we scrambled in a hail of dirt all the way down the steep slope, to the Vandalus running below.
The river rushed quick and deep here around the castle, leaving the city behind, going east. A hunting bird cried high above, a falcon wheeling in wide circles around the castle: was that Solya looking down at us? I snatched up a handful of reeds from the bank, without any incantations or charms: they had all gone out of my head. Instead I pulled a thread out of my cloak and tied the reeds at two ends. I threw the bundle down on the bank, halfway in the water, and flung magic at it. It grew into a long, light boat, and we scrambled in even as the river tugged it off the bank and dragged us along, rushing, bouncing off rocks on either side. There were shouts behind us, guards appearing on the outer walls of the castle high above.
“Down!” Kasia shouted, and pushed the children down flat and covered them with her body. The guards were firing arrows at us. One tore through her cloak and hit her back. Another landed just beside me and stuck into the side of the boat, quivering. I snatched the feathers off the arrow-shaft and threw them up into the air above us. They remembered what they’d once been and turned into a cloud of half-birds that whirled and sang, covering us from view for a few moments. I held on to the sides of the boat and called up Jaga’s quickening charm.
We shot forward. In one lurch, the castle and the city blurred back and away, turned into children’s toys. In a second, they had vanished around a curve of the river. In a third, we struck on the empty riverbank. My boat of reeds fell apart around us and dumped us all into the water.
I nearly sank. The weight of my clothes dragged me backwards, down into the murky water, light blurring above me. The cloud of Kasia’s skirts billowed next to me. I thrashed for the surface, blindly grabbing, and found a small hand grabbing back: Stashek put my hand on a tree-root. I pulled myself up coughing and managed to put my feet down in the water. “Nieshka!” Kasia was calling; she was holding Marisha in her arms.
We slogged up the soft muddy bank, Kasia’s feet sinking deep with every step, gouging holes in the earth that filled slowly in with water behind her. I sank down on the mucky grass. I was trembling with magic that wanted to spill out of me in every direction, uncontrolled. We’d moved too quickly. My heart was racing, still back there under the raining arrows, still in desperate flight, and not on a quiet deserted riverbank with waterbugs jumping over the ripples we’d made, mud staining my skirts. I’d been so long inside the castle, people and stone walls everywhere. The riverbank almost didn’t seem real.
Stashek sat down in a heap next to me, his small serious face bewildered, and Marisha crept over to him and huddled against him. He put an arm around her. Kasia sat down on their other side. I could gladly have lain down and slept for a day, a week. But Marek knew which way we’d gone. Solya would send eyes down the river to look for us. There was no time to rest.
I shaped a pair of crude oxen out of riverbank mud and breathed a little life into them, and built a cart out of twigs. We hadn’t been an hour on the road when Kasia said, “Nieshka,” looking behind us, and I drove them quickly into a stand of trees some way back from the road. A small haze of dust was drifting up from the road behind us. I held the reins, the oxen standing with plodding obedience, and we all held our breath. The cloud grew, unnaturally fast. It came nearer and nearer, and then a small troop of red-cloaked riders with crossbows and bared swords went flashing past. Sparks of magic were striking from the horses’ hooves, shod in steel caps that rang like bells on the hard-packed road. Some work of Alosha’s hands, now being turned to serve the Wood. I waited until the cloud was out of sight again up ahead before I drove our cart back onto the road.
When we drew into the first town, we found signs already posted. They were crudely, hastily drawn: a long parchment with my face and Kasia’s upon it, pinned to a tree next to the church. I hadn’t thought what it meant to be hunted. I’d been glad to see the town, planning to stop and buy food: our stomachs were pinching with hunger. Instead we pulled the cloaks over our heads, and rolled onward without speaking to anyone. My hands shook on the reins, all the way through, but we were lucky. It was market day, and the town was large, so close to the city; there were enough strangers around that no one marked us out, or demanded to see our faces. As soon as we were past the buildings, I shook the reins
and hurried the oxen onward, quicker, until the village disappeared entirely behind us.
We had to pull off the road twice more, packs of horsemen flying past. And then once more late that evening, when another king’s messenger in his red cloak passed us going the other way, racing back towards Kralia, hoof-sparks bright in the dimming light. He didn’t see us, intent on his fast pace; we were just a shadow behind a hedge. While we were hiding, I caught sight of something dark and square behind us: it was the open doorway of an abandoned cottage, half lost in a stand of trees. While Kasia held the oxen I hunted through the overgrown garden: a handful of late strawberries, some old turnips, onions; a few beans. We gave the children most of the food, and they fell asleep in the cart as we drove back onto the road. At least our oxen didn’t need to eat or rest, being made out of dirt. They would march on, all night long.
Kasia climbed onto the driver’s seat with me. The stars had come out in a rush, the sky wide and dark so far away from anyone living. The air was cold, still, too quiet; the cart didn’t creak, and the oxen didn’t huff or snort. “You haven’t tried to send word to their father,” Kasia said quietly.
I stared ahead, down the dark road. “He’s dead, too,” I said. “The Rosyans ambushed him.”
Kasia carefully took my hand, and we held on to each other as the cart rocked onward. After a little while she said, “The princess died next to me. She put the children in the wardrobe, and then she stood in front of it. They stabbed her over and over, and she just kept trying to stand up in front of the doors.” Her voice shook. “Nieshka, can you make a sword for me?”
I didn’t want to. Of course it was only sensible to give her one, in case we were caught. I didn’t fear for her: Kasia would be safe enough fighting, when blades just went dull on her skin and arrows fell away without scratching her. But she would be dangerous and terrible, with a sword. She wouldn’t need a shield, or armor, or even to think. She could walk through fields of soldiers like cutting oats, steady and rhythmic. I thought of Alosha’s sword, that strange hungry killing thing; it was tucked away into that magical pocket, but I could still feel its weight on my back. Kasia would be like that sword, implacable, but she wouldn’t only have one use. I didn’t want her to need to do things like that. I didn’t want her to need a sword.
It was a useless thing to want. I took out my belt-knife, and she gave me hers. I pulled the buckles off our belts and our shoes, and the pins off our cloaks, and took a stick off a tree as we passed it, and gathered all of it together in my skirt. While Kasia drove, I told them all to be straight and sharp and strong; I hummed them the song about the seven knights, and in my lap they listened and grew together into a long curved blade with a single sharpened edge, like a kitchen-knife instead of a sword, with small bright steel posts to hold the wooden hilt around it. Kasia picked it up and balanced it across her hands, and then she nodded once and put it down, under the seat.
We were three days on the road, the mountains growing steadily overnight, comforting in the distance. The oxen made a good pace, but we still had to duck behind hedges and hillocks and abandoned cottages every time riders came by, a steady stream of them. At first I was only glad whenever we managed to hide from them, too busy with fear and relief to think anything more about it. But while we peered over a hedge, watching a cloud vanishing away ahead, Kasia said, “They keep coming,” and a cold hard knot settled into the bottom of my stomach as I realized there had been too many of them just to be passing the word to look for us. They were doing something more.
If Marek had ordered the mountain passes closed, if his men had blockaded the tower; if they’d gone after Sarkan himself, taking him by surprise while he fought to hold the Wood off from Zatochek—
There wasn’t anything to do but keep going, but the mountains weren’t a comfort anymore. We didn’t know what we would find when we got to the other side. Kasia rode in the back of the cart with the children all that day as the road began to gently climb into the foothills, her hand on the sword hidden beneath her cloak. The sun climbed high, warm golden light shining full on her face. She looked remote and strange, inhumanly steady.
We reached the top of a hill and found the final crossroads in the Yellow Marshes, a small well beside it with a watering-trough. The road was empty, although it had been trampled heavily on both sides, by feet and horses. I couldn’t guess if it was only ordinary traffic or not. Kasia pulled up buckets for us to drink and wash our dusty faces, and then I mixed some fresh mud to patch up the oxen: they cracked here and there after a day’s walking. Stashek silently brought me handfuls of muddy grass.
We’d told the children, as gently as we could, about their father. Marisha didn’t quite understand, except to be afraid. She’d asked for her mother a few times already. Now she clung to Kasia’s skirts almost all the time, like a smaller child, and didn’t go out of sight of her. Stashek understood too well. He received the news in silence, and afterwards he said to me, “Did Uncle Marek try to have us killed? I’m not a child,” he added, looking at my face, as if I needed him to say so, when he’d just asked me such a thing.
“No,” I managed, through my tight throat. “He’s only letting the Wood drive him.”
I wasn’t sure Stashek believed me. He’d been quiet, ever since. He was patient with Marisha, who clung to him, too, and helped with the work whenever he could. But he said almost nothing.
“Agnieszka,” he said, while I finished plastering up the second oxen’s hind leg, and stood up to go wash the dirt off my hands. I turned to follow his gaze. We could see a long way back behind us, miles and miles. In the west, a thick hazy cloud of dust covered the road. It seemed to move, coming onward as we stood watching. Kasia picked Marisha up. I shaded my eyes and squinted against the sun.
It was a crowd of men marching: thousands of them. A stand of tall spears glittered at the front, among riders on horses and a great banner flying white and red. I saw a bay horse leading, a silver-armored figure on its back; next to it a grey horse with a white-cloaked rider—
The world tilted askew, narrowed, rushed in on me. Solya’s face leapt vividly out: he was looking right at me. I jerked my head away so hard that I fell down. “Nieshka?” Kasia said.
“Quick,” I panted, scrambling up, pushing Stashek towards the back of the cart. “He saw me.”
We drove into the mountains. I tried to guess how far behind us the army was. I would have whipped the oxen if that would have done any good, but they were going as fast as they could. The road was tumbled with rocks, narrow and twisting, and their legs began to crack and crumble quickly. There wasn’t any mud to patch them with anymore, even if I could have brought myself to stop. I didn’t dare use the quickening spell: I couldn’t see beyond the next turn. What if there were men up ahead, and I whisked us straight into their arms; or worse yet I threw us into midair over a canyon?
The left ox abruptly tumbled forward, its leg crumbling away, and smashed into clods of dirt against the rocks. The second one pulled us on a little farther, and then between one step and the next just fell apart. The cart tipped forward, unbalanced, and we all came down hard on our seats in a pile of twigs and dry grass.
We were deep in the mountains by then, the trees wizened and scrubby, and high peaks on either side of the twisting road. We couldn’t see far enough behind us to tell how close the army was. Usually it was a day’s walk across the pass. Kasia picked up Marisha, and Stashek got to his feet. He walked beside me doggedly, uncomplaining while we hurried, feet sore and the sharp thin air painful in our throats.
We stopped to catch our breath by a jutting outcrop with a tiny summer stream trickling; just enough to cup a handful for our mouths, and as I straightened up a raucous cawing near my head made me jump. A black crow with glossy feathers stared at me from the branch of a wizened tree clinging between rocks. It cawed again, loudly.
The crow paced us as we fled, hopping from branch to rock to rock. I threw a pebble at it, trying to make it go away; i
t only jumped away and cawed again, a sour triumphant note. Two more joined it a little farther on. The path snaked along the crest of the ridge, green grass rolling gently away to either side down to steep slopes.
We kept running. The path dived as one mountain pulled away from it, leaving a sickening drop to the right. Maybe we were past the peak by now. I couldn’t stop running long enough to think about it properly. I nearly dragged Stashek along by his arm. Somewhere behind us, I heard a horse shriek: as if it had slipped, running too fast on the narrow mountain pass. The crows lifted into the air, circling, and went to go and see; all except for our one steady companion, hopping along, its bright eyes fixed on us.
The air was thin; we struggled and gasped for air as we ran. The sun was sinking.
“Stop!” someone far behind us shouted, and an arrow sailed down, clattering against the rocks over our heads. Kasia stopped, pushed Marisha into my arms when I caught up to her, and took the place at the rear. Stashek threw a frightened look back at me.
“Keep going!” I said. “Keep going until you see the tower!” Stashek pelted on and vanished with the trail around a wall of rock. I heaved Marisha up close against me, her arms wrapping tight around my neck and her legs around my waist, clinging, and ran after him. The horses were so close we could hear pebbles crunching under their hooves.
“I can see it!” Stashek was calling from up ahead.
“Hold on tight,” I told Marisha, and ran as fast as I could, her body bumping against me; she tucked her cheek down against my shoulder and didn’t speak. Stashek turned anxiously as I came panting around the curve: he was standing on a ledge jutting out from the mountainside, almost wide enough to be a meadow. My legs were spent: I spilled to the ground, just barely keeping my knees long enough to put Marisha down without falling on top of her. We’d come out onto the southern slopes. Below us the path continued to snake back and forth across the mountain all the way down to Olshanka.