by jiwo
Not anymore. Everything was closing in around them, the way snow clouds sometimes enveloped the mountains and the forest. The flakes that fell from the clouds were the purest white, but the clouds themselves were darker than confusion, darker than death.
Tomas had spoken only once. He’d been staring out into the forest from the door of the hut, when without warning he said, “We may have to move on, Peter.”
That was all, and he would say no more, despite Peter’s questions and pleading. Peter was left running over in his mind everything that had happened, again and again, struggling for the answers he desperately craved.
The day after Peter had been thrown from Anna’s house, the day he had seen Agnes, they had a visitor.
Peter was stirred from his mood by the sound of hoof-beats on the bridge.
He went outside to find Sofia leading Sultan home.
“You didn’t come for him,” Sofia said.
Peter shrugged.
“I had things to do,” he said.
“There,” she said, smiling. “I looked after him. As I promised.”
Peter took Sultan’s reins willingly enough, but didn’t speak.
Sofia watched him stable the horse and come back to the front of the hut. She tried again.
“It was kind of you. To lend him to me,” she said. She hesitated. “It was good of you to…trust me.”
Peter turned to her.
“I did trust you, Sofia,” he said. “But then I found your uncle telling the village Elders all about my father. My father just wants to be left alone. You had no right to do that.”
“I am not responsible for what my uncle does,” Sofia snapped. “But that is not the point. It is hardly important what anyone knows about you and your father. My people went to talk to the Elders about the threat from the Shadow Queen. They went to offer their services in the name of the Winter King. You can’t hide on your little island forever, Peter.”
Peter waited for her to finish, then went back inside.
“Thank you for returning Sultan to us,” he said quietly as he entered the hut.
Through the door he heard Sofia.
“The Miorita, Peter. You should understand it.”
He heard her gentle footsteps retreat across the bridge, the bridge to their little island.
Damn her! Peter thought. What did she mean by that? The Miorita? What had that to do with anything? And yet, it was not only the Gypsy girl who had got under his skin. That song had too.
“You should understand it.”
What did it mean?
After that brief encounter, Peter had spent the hours lying on his bed, ignoring Tomas as he opened jar after jar of rakia, thinking about Agnes, about the forest, and Radu and Stefan. About Sofia.
And yes, about the Miorita too.
After three days, Peter’s body rebelled. His mind might have been drifting rudderless like a raft on the open sea, but his body was used to hard work and he was restless. Finally, on the third morning, he practically threw himself out of bed and pulled his boots on so violently that even Tomas raised an eyebrow.
“What are you doing?” Tomas asked.
“Going to work,” Peter said. “It’s all I know.”
He grabbed his axe and put Sultan into the harness of the cart, and they lurched off into the depths of the snowy forest.
Peter didn’t particularly care where they went, but at the back of his mind was a tree that he and Tomas had been going to fell some weeks before. It was a huge old birch and it would take days to saw and chop it all, but Peter just wanted to see it fall, and smash to the ground. His body cried out for it. And he wanted this wood to fall, not to carve but to burn.
After an hour or so they found the tree. They were far into the depths of the forest, but it was a sunny morning, and for a short while it was possible to believe that midwinter was more than a few weeks away. Peter tethered Sultan to a tree some way from the birch, more from habit than necessity. His horse was by far the most reliable thing in his life. That, and possibly the forest, though recent events had made him begin to doubt that the forest was always benign.
Peter sized the tree. Even from the ground it looked vast, and he had learnt in his career as a woodcutter that no matter how big a tree looked in the air, it would be twice as big when it was on the ground. He tried to circle its girth with his arms, and could only just brush his fingertips against each other.
He stood back, made a silent prayer of thanks to the forest, and then swung his axe as if his life depended on it.
Wood chips rained around him, and around his feet the snow was rapidly covered with the spoil from his axe.
Something possessed him as the axe flew through the air faster and faster with each stroke. He formed a perfect undercut in less than twenty strokes, and freed the opposite side of the tree from its sheath of bark. Then he began the real work, making the cut that would bring the monster to the ground, exactly where he wanted it.
Still the blows from the axe fell, and nothing could have stood in its way, not twenty men, and least of all a tree, even one that would keep a family warm for a whole winter. A vision of his father thirty years ago came into his mind—in King Michael’s army, fighting the Turks. And maybe other, more deadly enemies.
Peter’s axe fell. Tomas’s sword swung.
Both cut their foe to the ground, blow after blow after blow.
Suddenly Peter stopped. He had been so hypnotized by the swing of his axe that he’d barely noticed how far he had cut. The trunk where he’d been chopping gave a deafening crack, as if lightning had struck nearby. The tree moved. It had begun to go.
Peter stood back, knowing he had done enough. How slowly it moved at first, its motion barely perceptible as it inched its way from the sky! There was another crack as the timber split under its own weight, and then the tree came with a rush, leaning into the air, finding nothing to support it, and accelerating downward till it hammered into the snowy floor of the forest.
The ground shook.
Sultan whinnied and Peter looked over at him.
“That’s all for today,” he said. On any other day he would have begun the process of sawing logs short enough for Sultan to drag home. The cart was empty and waiting, but Peter wanted to do no more work. He had escaped from the torpor of the hut, and felt his body come alive once more. More than that, he had been in control, and it felt good.
Peter never knew how it happened, but suddenly he saw something glinting in the snow. Looking closer, he saw it was an axe, and immediately, instinctively, he knew whose it was. It had belonged to Radu.
Suddenly he was filled with dread, seeing the axe as an omen.
His exhilaration at felling the tree evaporated, for he was certain, as certain as he had ever been of anything, that his father was in trouble. At that very moment.
Even as his blows had struck the tree.
He freed Sultan from the harness, and leaving the cart and the fallen tree where they were, galloped home.
33
Tomas
As soon as Peter saw the hut, he knew that whatever it was that had told him of the danger to his father had not lied.
Peter rode Sultan straight over the bridge, threw himself from the horse’s back, then froze. The place had been turned upside down.
There had obviously been a fight; the sawhorse lay on its side, the stable door was swinging open, the log pile by the hut had collapsed.
Then Peter saw blood in the snow. An irregular, smeary trail of it leading across the small triangle that was their island to the ditch that Tomas had dug. With bile rising in his throat, Peter followed the trail, dreading what he might find. He looked over the lip of the bank and saw a body face down in the water, snagged by a tree root.
Peter recognized the clothes. It was one of the Gypsies. He turned and ran to the hut.
“Father! Father?”
There was Tomas, lying beside his bed as if he’d been trying to get there before collapsing on the
floor. Peter crouched beside him.
“I thought you were…,” Peter began, but couldn’t bring himself to say it.
Tomas smiled, but he was obviously weak. Next to him on the floor was his axe. Peter saw blood on the blade, and he knew whose it was.
“Are you hurt?”
Tomas shook his head.
“Fit as a flea. Help me up, will you?”
Peter tried to lift his father onto the bed, but couldn’t manage it. He was so heavy, now, it was hard to believe.
With a grunt Tomas sank back to the floor, and Peter knew he had been lying about being hurt.
“What did they do?”
“Nothing,” Tomas smiled. “I wouldn’t let them.”
“Wait,” Peter said, and dragged the covers from the bed. “Lie on these instead, till you’re ready to get up.”
“Get me a drink, would you?” Tomas said, wincing as he rolled onto the makeshift bed.
Peter didn’t know what to say, but that in itself was enough to irritate Tomas.
“I’ve just been attacked by four men. I’ve killed one of them. I need a damn drink, Peter!”
Peter nodded.
“Sorry. Yes, yes.”
He fumbled around with a bottle, trying to find a mug.
“Give me that.” Tomas snatched it from Peter and drank deeply. Slivovitz dribbled down his chin and dripped onto his shirt.
Peter knelt by his father again.
“What did they want with you, Father? Why did they do this?”
Tomas took another drink, then looked into Peter’s face.
“I’m sorry, Peter,” he said. “I’ve lied to you.”
Peter shook his head, putting his hand on his father’s shoulder.
“Listen to me,” his father said. “I’ve lied to you. About so many things.”
“I don’t care,” Peter said gently. “I don’t care about that. Why did they do this? What did they want with you?”
“It’s not me they want. Well, not anymore. Not now I’m like this.”
Peter wasn’t sure whether he meant hurt, or something more, that he was a useless drunk.
“It’s not me they want. It’s that.”
Tomas nodded up, behind Peter.
“There,” he said, pointing. “Up in the eaves, behind the beam.”
Peter followed Tomas’s shaking hand to the top of the wall. He stood on a stool and felt around, and there, tucked into the crook between the joists and the roof, was the box.
“Take it down, Peter. Take it down.”
Peter had seen the box before, but now, even before he opened it, he knew what was inside. And if the sword was true, then it was all true.
His father, a hero.
“The sword?” Peter asked.
Tomas nodded.
“Have a look if you like.”
Peter’s hands trembled as he lifted the lid and gazed upon the blade inside. He didn’t dare touch it.
“But why?” he asked, shaking his head. “It’s just a sword.”
Tomas laughed, then winced again.
“Sit down, Peter. Listen to me. I’ve lied to you. That thing you see there. It’s so much more than a sword. It has power over those who return. Return from the grave. You understand?”
“Sofia told me. What I don’t understand is why you’ve denied them all these years. Why?”
Tomas took another drink, then a deep breath. He looked across the room to the fire.
“Thirty years ago, I fought with the King. They call him the Winter King now, but then he was just King Michael. The Turks had fought their way far from home, right up as far as Poland. For years we’d been powerless to stop them; the noble voivods who ruled each region too busy arguing with each other to unite. Michael changed all that, and got each voivod to swear allegiance to him. In that way he formed a mighty army that pushed the Turks back as far as the Danube. The river ran red! And then we pushed even further. I was with him as we headed far into Turkish territory. It was there that I found the sword.
“And there that I learnt of something worse than the Turks. I had heard of the vrykolakoi before, in fireside tales. Everyone has. But in that strange land I found myself fighting them as well as the Turks. The sword was made in a land where these terrors were common, and it has the power to destroy them for good, with a single stroke.”
Peter nodded, but it still didn’t make sense.
“But why are the Gypsies fighting you for it? Why have you never told me about any of this?”
“Wait. A story has its purpose and its path. It must be told correctly for it to be understood. Remember that, Peter.
“Well. The wars ended, but not before the King died. Not from the sword, but from some disease that found him on our forays onto foreign soil. It ate him from inside and it was terrible to see. It was then, in the disbanded armies that were making their way home, that I met Caspar. Sofia’s father.
“From him I learnt all about the ways of those who return from death. They are to be found in every land, he said, and I found out how true that was. He had heard about my fighting, about my sword, and we spent the years that followed hunting them down and putting them back to eternal rest.
“For they are like a disease too, Peter. They infect the living and make us like them. Once an outbreak starts, it is like an epidemic. It can be hard to stop. Sometimes a great many people die before it is brought to an end.”
“And the Shadow Queen?”
Tomas shook his head.
“That I do not know. I thought she was no more than a story. But if she is real, I don’t know how she is involved in all this.”
Tomas paused, staring at the floor, breathing heavily.
“Sofia said you were put in jail after the wars, because of the chaos when King Michael died,” Peter said. “Is that not true?”
Tomas shook his head.
“No. It was Caspar’s fault.”
“But he died in jail too! Or is that a lie, as well?”
“No, that much is true. After years of hunting the dead, I had had enough. Things were getting more dangerous for us, simply because we were living in a time of peace. Think about it. Think of what we used to do. We would prowl around at night, hunting through graveyards, digging up graves. Why? To stop them, send them back. Kill them, if you like. During a time of war and strife, no one gives much care to their dead. People are lucky if they get to bury them at all. But in times of peace, men who desecrate graves are not well liked. I wanted to stop. Caspar had married and had a baby girl. I wanted to do the same.”
A baby girl, Peter thought. Sofia.
“But Caspar convinced me to continue; he said it was too important. Soon we were arrested, but I had hidden the sword. We were tried and both ended up in jail for desecrating the grave of a nobleman. A nobleman who was returning from the soil every night to attack young girls. It didn’t matter. The local voivod locked us away for life, and I would have stayed there forever had he himself not been deposed. That came too late for Caspar, and I vowed that when I got out I would have no more to do with any of it.
“That was years ago. I met your mother a year later. She died giving birth…to you, Peter. And I renewed my vow to fight no more, to look after you. I just haven’t done a very good job, that’s all.”
“No, Father. That’s not true. I didn’t understand things, about the box, about why we had to keep moving all the time. But I understand one thing. You think it was my fault that my mother died—”
“No!” Tomas cried, sitting up, grimacing with pain. “No. I never thought that.”
“Didn’t you?” Peter said quietly. “Didn’t you?”
They fell silent.
Peter thought about his father’s old life. He had fought with the King, and the King had died. He had fought with his friend to protect people from the hostages, and instead of being rewarded, they had been thrown in jail. His friend had died there. Turning his back on this warrior life, he had found a wife, and then had seen her
die giving birth to his only son. He should have been proud of his son. But he had turned away from him. Was it simply too much, to see a reminder of his wife’s death every day?
So finally, as soon as Peter was old enough to fend for himself, Tomas had turned to the one thing in life that had never let him down. Drink.
Peter looked again at the sword.
To stop me seeing this, you broke my toy, he thought. My little wooden goose.
But he said nothing.
Though his heart had been damaged by his father’s story, there was one small seed of hope. Tomas had finally told him everything. There were no more secrets between them, none of the secrets that had kept them apart all Peter’s life.
They could act.
“Tomas. My father,” Peter said. “Why did they do this to you? You were on the same side, once.”
“There are no sides here. I vowed not to fight anymore, and I will not. Look at me! One scrap and I’m all but done for. Another one would kill me.”
“So you refused to join them? And they wanted the sword instead? So why not just give it to them? Give it to them, and let’s get out of here. Go far away.”
“And go where? We’ve been running all our lives. The hostages, those who return, are everywhere. The ancestors, those who fight them, are everywhere too. But the sword is mine and I will not give it up. They’ll be back soon, and I suppose next time they’ll send more than four weaklings to get it. I cannot help that.”
“No, but it doesn’t have to be this way. If you won’t help them, then just give them the sword. It makes no sense to keep it. Then they can try to stop this epidemic.”
Tomas grew suddenly angry.
“I told you! It’s not my fight anymore! It’s not our business. We’re just woodcutters. I want to live quietly on this island. Bother no one, and be bothered by no one!”
Peter stood and stared at his father.
“How can you be so selfish!” he shouted. “Help them! Give them the sword at least. They need you. I need you!”
“Everything was fine until they arrived.”
“If that’s true, then why do you drink? It’s killing you, and yet you will not stop! And why would you need to drink but to stop yourself from seeing, from thinking?”