by Mark Lucek
‘I would have given my life for you,’ Yaroslav said. ‘There is part of the story that I have never spoken of, even to you. I’d gone back out when the hunters had given up. They laughed, warned me that I’d only get lost and find nothing in the snows but my way to the ancestor world, but I had to try. After your mother died, you were all that was left to me and I couldn’t bear to lose you. So I braved the storm.
‘Sometimes, in the deep forest, a hunter will sense that he is being stalked. Well, I’m no hunter, but I had that feeling all the same. Some animal followed my steps, I was sure of it, though I could see nothing. I told myself that it was just my imagination but, as I pressed further on, the feeling grew.
‘Then I came across my own tracks, less than an hour old. I was lost and must have doubled back across a ravine. Beside my track ran the paw prints of a great bear. At first I thought it could have been a lynx, but they never grow that big. Even a seasoned hunter would have turned back for the camp rather than face such a creature alone. A bear filled with the famine of winter, she’d have ripped the flesh from my bones within a second.
‘Nobody would have blamed me if I’d run away. Such prints, larger and deeper than any I had ever come across, and you know how bad I am with a spear, but I couldn’t let you die. And I can’t now. You must forget me, live for my sake. I cannot come with you.’ His voice was close to tears. ‘Our paths must separate, until we meet once again in the ancestor world. I shall keep a place for you there, only try not to greet me too soon.’
Iwa winced as the ropes still bit into her flesh, but they had loosened. Then she stopped. A figure stood outside the hut. Suddenly the skins were flung aside and Grunmir strode through.
‘So how are you, little Rusalka? Has the old woman given you enough to eat?’
‘Untie me and I’ll feel even better.’
‘So you still have spirit.’ Grunmir cast his eyes over the ropes. ‘That is good; I wouldn’t like you to have given up on life just yet.’ He must have noticed that she’d been trying to loosen them but obviously had decided that tightening them was a waste of time.
‘No, you’d just leave that for Wislaw to accomplish.’
‘Perhaps,’ Grunmir said slowly. He hadn’t replaced the curtain and she could see into the centre of the camp. In front of Krol Gawel’s ship the woyaks had placed a rough stone altar, behind which the wooden statue of Piórun glimmered, but it was the iron cross behind that caught her eye. Dominating the scene, it reared up as high as four fully grown men, its shadow cast deep across the altar.
‘This is how Wislaw plans your end,’ Grunmir said, as he closed the curtain. ‘It is a trick he has picked up from the northern men. You will be hung on the cross and gutted. Your flesh will be stripped from your bones and your lungs parted and placed on the cross so that you will form a blood eagle. Those who come from the northlands are well versed in such, though even they think that such a fate is too grim for one such as you.’
‘And that will please Piórun?’ She slumped against the spit. She had to get her father out of here, the sooner the better before his spirit was completely broken. Is this all the woyaks can bring, nothing but death and destruction? All about her, she could sense the fear running like mud after the spring rains.
She had no idea why Gawel still clung to the idea of a kroldom, or Grunmir even. Not that she had much of an idea about what a kroldom was, but she knew that the woyaks were on the verge of death. It wouldn’t take much for them to turn on one other.
‘Much is done in Piórun’s name, but I do not think that Wislaw cares much for that god. There are darker forces at work here, little Rusalka, and you appear to be at the centre of them.’
‘Then why not let me go?’ Suddenly a new hope dawned. If Grunmir hated the old priest so much then why not? Surely anything would be better than giving Wislaw what he wanted, and nobody would dare suspect the krol’s commander. ‘I could leave here and never come back, you’d be rid of me forever. What would your priest do without his sacrifice?’
‘Do not think that I have not considered it. I have seen many men die, but I have no taste for this. Neither do most of the woyaks, but this demon has cast fear into their hearts.
‘Even Krol Gawel has grown afraid. Ah, if only you had seen him in the Battle of the Mounds. He was a different man then, when he led the duke’s war band, his battle helm glimmering. I thought the Avars would have us that day and so it should have been, but for him. Ha! You should have seen the horse lords turn tail before his sword. That was a great day – a day of booty, a day of victory. The Avar Khan fled before our spears, running off like a cur with his tail between his legs and his men left to kneel before our battle standard.
‘Yes, I can still see the krol as he shared out the booty to each according to their merit. He spared the prisoners too, settled down to cups with the rebel duke and the Avar lords, those who’d survived. In the morning he let them go, gave them food and horses and sent them back to the khan. I doubt there are many who were ever as merciful, or as terrible in war, but this place has sapped the life from him.’
‘He has my sympathy,’ Iwa whispered, ‘though he could always go back to the mounds.’ She tensed and half expected to feel Grunmir’s fist. Maybe if he got angry he would leave and give her the chance to escape, but the old woyak just laughed.
‘You are quite a one to keep your humour in such circumstances. There are many who would cower before such a fate as yours. It is a pity that you are no woyak. Perhaps there is courage in you after all.’ He could not help but run his hand over her cheek. Yes, this was a girl he might have grown to respect. ‘But now you are about to die and there is nothing I can do for you.’ His hand dropped as he looked at her, careworn eyes searching across her features.
‘Then why waste your breath?’ She was too tired now to think of much else apart from her plan for escape. If only she could get rid of the old woyak, there was still a chance that she might free Yaroslav and make her way out of the camp.
But even as the old woyak turned away with only the slightest stiffness about him, a plan had begun to form. Somehow she had to keep him there. He was ready to turn against the priest, she sensed it. And suddenly the possibility that he might help her out of this dawned anew. There was no way that she’d be able to make it past the guards with her father, not in his state. But with Grunmir’s help there’d be a chance.
She’d always been able to talk her way out of trouble, or into an extra share of food. She’d even pulled the fool’s hood over Katchka more than once, returning with stories about seeing Leszy in the forest who warned her against picking a certain herb or berry when all the time she’d been playing with spiders or singing to the grass dolls she’d made on the riverbank.
‘You could loosen the ropes a little,’ she said cautiously. These woyaks were a strange people and she’d have to guide him carefully. He might not be ready to betray the old priest all at once, but if she got him to loosen the knots that would be the first step.
She couldn’t help a glance to the door. How much time did she have? She’d have to work quickly before Wislaw had the chance to do anything. From the other side of the hut Yaroslav moaned and it was all she could do to keep from trying to break free, her mouth dry with fear and dread.
‘Just get me some water and I’ll tell you all about the priest. I’m so thirsty and my wrists hurt too. You’re right, he’s got plans and not just against me either. I heard him talking with some of the others.’ She’d hoped that that would be enough to kindle Grunmir’s suspicions; tempting him with the thought that she might have something to bargain with. But the old woyak was in no mood to indulge her.
‘Do not play me for a fool. I may not have Wislaw’s word-craft, or the krol’s ability to hunt out the hearts of men, but I am no petty trickster. There is some mischief here and you are at the centre of it. Wislaw is right, I am one for warcraft and spear-work, but that takes more intelligence than he credits.
‘It ta
kes much more than that priest will ever know to balance your life on a spear point and cast it into the tumult. So we will have an end to your games. Give me something, a reason to let you live. Who are the traitors in the camp? Give me their names and I can go to Krol Gawel. Nobody really wants you to die, not like this.’ He glanced to the skins that flapped loose about the doorway. ‘If we can convince the krol that you are useful then he’ll think twice about giving you over to Wislaw.’
He paused. He’d never trusted the fool priest, never understood the bond that tied the krol to him, but there was something else as well, a trace of genuine affection for the girl. He’d seen many men die, felt the thrill of battle as his axe cut past armour and into muscle and bone, but he’d never been one to waste people.
I’ve seen too much of war and death. The thought came to him as he looked into this girl’s eyes. He’d fathered children as young as her. Where were they now? ‘Wislaw ever keeps his own council and his plans are not easily spilled. But you do know something. Give a reason why you shouldn’t die,’ he whispered, ‘something I can take to the krol.’
‘I don’t have any names for you, and even if I did I doubt your krol would spare me; I am not a duke or a northern earl.’
‘But you know more than you let on. Back there in the ship, you began to say something. You know far more than many would credit, but I am watchful, little Rusalka. So what is it that you have to tell me?’
Iwa felt her body go limp. There was a dull ache from her wrists where the rope had bitten into her flesh and a cold numbing sensation ran across her body. Could she really trust the old woyak? She didn’t want to tell him about magic. Would he really believe her and, even if he did, would he want to help her escape?
‘I would be quick about your story,’ Grunmir said, ‘and do not spare the details. You were on the verge of saying something, but you held back. In the krol’s presence that was the right thing to do. The woyaks would never have taken your side against Wislaw, no matter how much they distrust him. In public his word-craft holds sway, but here, with me, things are different. Now is the time to talk freely.’
‘Perhaps,’ she mumbled as she looked up at Grunmir and wondered how much to tell him. ‘You were right,’ she began, her words slow and carefully weighed, ‘these woods are cursed and you should go, go now, take your woyaks and your krols, but leave the clan in peace. The forest is not for you.’
She licked her lips and wondered what Grunmir would make of all this, but he gave nothing away as he stood before her, his silence willing her to say more. ‘And you are right about Wislaw. I don’t know which gods he truly serves but it is not Piórun or any god that men recognise.
‘Those tattoos of his, they watch and wait, slither about his skin. I think they have sunk into his heart.’ She paused to study the look on the old woyak’s face. He didn’t believe her, not about the tattoos. Nothing more than ink on skin, he’d never seen them move. Surely this girl had imagined it.
And for a moment she thought that he would leave, his face ready to laugh at her stupidity, but something held him back. Not that he believed her, who could credit such a thing? But she’d touched on a deep distrust that stirred within.
He’d been to Cordoba, that white-walled Moorish city, seen snake charmers climb on invisible ropes and talked with desert mages who could draw out a man’s soul and suck it into a walnut. Were the tattoos of the old priest like that? Perhaps this girl had seen something that he could not, or was it just shadows and childish imagining? Yet, even as he looked at her, he couldn’t shake the suspicion. Had he seen them move after all? Had something stopped him noticing? Some trickery of the old priest, perhaps?
‘You have something that this Lord Bethrayal needs.’ A change in the girl’s tone brought him back to the room. ‘You did take something from the mounds, something which belongs to the demon who stalks you.’
‘This demon?’
‘Bethrayal, his name is Lord Bethrayal.’
‘And how do you know this?’ Now his voice was sly.
‘A small stone, a trinket to anybody else, but this demon has need of it,’ she continued slowly, well aware of the indecision that played across Grunmir’s face. Would he really believe her if she told him about Miskyia?
He could hardly deny the demon, something he’d seen with his own eyes, but this talk of hidden places and buildings of stone? She’d never have believed it herself. Of course she hadn’t been to the lands of the Moors or any of the other places Grunmir had seen, and had no idea that he’d seen anything more than one of the wooden castles of the Polish lords.
‘This thing,’ he said, ‘this trinket, where is it?’
‘Let me go and I can point it out to you. Give it to me and then get out of here as far and as fast as you can. The demon will not follow, so long as you free the clan and do not return.’ There was a long pause as Grunmir looked her in the eye, and all Iwa could hear was Yaroslav’s breath, soft and painfully shallow on the other side of the curtain. ‘It is a fearful way to die,’ Grunmir said at last. ‘To be sacrificed as the blood eagle.’
‘Somehow I didn’t think that Wislaw had planned an easy death for me.’ Iwa couldn’t help but glance at the ropes that held her. ‘The ancestor world beckons to us all, sooner or later.’ But her voice held little conviction.
‘But what happens in the ancestor world is a mystery, little Rusalka. I do not believe that Wislaw plans to sacrifice you to Piórun. Never before has the thunderer commanded such a thing. Wislaw keeps a second statue, a tiny stone god, a mangled thing with the head of a snake and the wings of a bat.’
‘Do you imagine that I can be scared by children’s tales?’ Still she clung to the hope that Grunmir might help her. ‘Just help me get the amulet and I can take his demon away from you.’
‘To end up being sacrificed to something like that, yes I would be afraid. When the northmen craft the blood eagle it is bad enough, but Wislaw plans to crucify you upside down, so that you will face the earth and your soul will pass into the mud and be eaten by whatever god he truly serves. Is that the fate you really want, little Rusalka, to die in such a manner? Do you think that Wislaw’s god will let you into the ancestor world?’
It took all of her self-control not to start tugging on the ropes. If only Grunmir would give her a few hours alone, she’d slip the knot and get away from the camp forever. But what would happen to Yaroslav?
Yet the idea that she could take the demon from them played on his mind. Somehow he couldn’t see it, the forest stripling covered in mud. Could she really do more than Wislaw and all his cunning magery? Yet some of the wanderers of the Moorish deserts claimed many powers, and there were the Avar shamans of the rolling steppe. Were they any more to look at? Somewhere in the back of his mind the desperation stirred. Part of him wanted to believe. Who really knew what it would take to rid them of this demon? And yet, as he looked over her fragile body, he couldn’t bring himself to trust her. No, she’d have to do more first.
‘Wislaw indulges in a public sacrifice each night, and on the third he will kill you. Already his voice holds too much influence amongst the gullible, and with each ceremony his influence grows. Even the krol looks on and bids me to attend. Give me a name,’ Grunmir said, ‘anything so that I can go to Krol Gawel and plead for your life. But do not talk to me of such foolish things as trinkets and demons.’
‘Bielobog, Chernobog and Jezi Baba: are those names enough for you?’
Grunmir’s gaze flickered to the ground and then he looked her in the eye. ‘Wislaw has not told us of this god that he secretly worships, though there are a few amongst us who have suspected it right enough. But we are too scared, whilst this demon has us caged none will dare stand against it.’ He paused and waited for Iwa, but she said nothing. ‘Then there’s nothing to save you.’ Without a moment’s pause, he left, the curtain flapping behind him.
‘Maybe I won’t disappoint you after all,’ Iwa said to herself as she began to try the knots
again. She gave the rope another tug and tried to wriggle her wrist free. Slowly the rope began to loosen. She tugged harder and felt the knot give, her wrist almost slipping through. Then she stopped and looked to the doorway. They were alone.
Chapter Eighteen
For the rest of the day she waited, her wrists aching and her legs barely able to touch the ground. Slipping the knot would have been easy, but what then? There was no chance of escape until nightfall, and she daren’t risk anyone finding her.
So she waited, the feeling of unease growing as the sun began to set. Grunmir had left too quickly. I’m not the only one playing games. He’s run off to the krol and told him everything, no doubt.
Where are you, little one? Sometimes she dreamt that Miskyia searched for her. I have looked for you in the spaces between worlds. Sometimes Iwa tried to struggle against the knots. Had someone tightened them again?
Outside, she was aware of the chants and the sacrifices and the passing of nights. There were times when the Molfar shamans would do the same, sacrificing a larger animal each night, the power growing until they made the final sacrifice under the light of a full moon. They were the ones who spoke their magic out loud, or else chanted it to the beat of a single drum.
If only she could get out and find out what was going on. Dimly she was aware of visitors to the hut, but Grunmir was never amongst them. Not even Katchka was allowed inside anymore. What’s happened to her? she thought vaguely. Has the krol killed her after all? Iwa couldn’t help a shiver. At least she’s not going to poison me with mushrooms. She can save them for the Poles.
Sometimes she was aware of a figure lingering outside the tent. She had the inkling that it could have been Wislaw and, once or twice, she heard him whisper. Isn’t it enough that he keeps me awake with his chanting and his spells? If only he could have been one of the szeptun, who whispered their magic quietly. Perhaps he was drawn to her, unable to keep away as he circled ever closer.