by K L Conger
Taras and Nikolai leapt simultaneously to their feet and ran to the cabin’s window, Taras yanking up one corner of the thick wolf pelt he’d nailed over the window when the first snows came. He didn’t know what to expect but prepared himself for the worst. Perhaps the sight of the large tiger in his yard, though that crack couldn’t have come from any animal’s throat.
Squatting to get a better view beneath the pelt, Taras’s mouth dropped open. A huge black bear stood with it’s back to the cabin. Raised up on its hind legs, it pressed its front paws against the barn door, which had splintered under the bear’s weight.
The barn couldn’t be called weak, but it aged alongside Taras. Most predators wouldn’t have gotten in, but bears often used their body weight to press inward. The door had splintered jaggedly across the middle and still the bear pushed. It would be able to enter the barn in another few seconds.
Taras raced into his bedroom and snatched up his harquebus from above the door. He also grabbed his ax—which had proven useful against the tiger—but slung it across his back in favor of the more powerful gun.
When he lunged back into the main room, he didn’t see Nikolai, though his bedroom door stood open. At least the boy didn’t run outside. Putting Nikolai out of mind, Taras yanked open the front door and darted into the wind. As he crossed the porch, another crack announced the barn door giving way.
Taras planned to stay on the porch to take his shot, but the bear moved into the barn and out of Taras’s line of vision. Running across the snow-covered yard, he stopped short of entering the barn and peered in the doorway.
Sure enough, the bear prowled back and forth in front of Jasper’s stall, obviously assessing the situation and contemplating the quickest path to his meal of horse.
Jasper screamed and whinnied, attempting to rear up on his hind legs. The ropes tying his bridle to the sides of his stall kept him from doing so. He settled for kicking the inside walls of the stall with his hooves and rolling his eyes wildly.
Taras raised the harquebus, aimed it at the bear’s rib cage, and fired.
The bear stumbled, barely staying on its feet. It turned its feral eyes on Taras. Half a breath later, it charged him. Enough distance remained between them to give Taras a decent head start. He merely stepped out of the barn and ran around one side, hoping to be out of sight by the time the bear exited.
Running all the way around to the back, Taras took the time to reload. He didn’t hear the crunch of the bear’s steps coming toward him, but the wind kept him from hearing much of anything. Still, he should hear something, shouldn’t he? Perhaps the bear emerged, didn’t see Taras, and turned its attentions back to Jasper. Good. Taras would sneak up and get another good shot.
Moving as quietly as possible in the frozen snow, trusting the wind to cloak his steps, he moved to the corner of the barn, preparing to step around it.
The bear stepped out directly in front of him. Even on all fours, it nearly looked him in the eye.
With a gasp, Taras staggered back a step, raised the harquebus and fired, hitting the bear in the chest, between the front legs.
The bear roared in pain this time and charged Taras. Practically pinned against the barn with nowhere to go and no time to load his gun again, Taras raised an arm to protect his face.
The bear’s claw swiped downward, shredding the skin and muscle of Taras’s forearm. Pain bloomed across his face and blood poured into his left eye.
Injured and half-blind, Taras felt sure his days walking the earth had come to an end.
A solid thunk came from somewhere in front of him and the bear howled again. Taras lowered his arm. Movement behind the bear caught his eye. He blinked blood out of his eye several times before he could make sense of it. Nikolai stood on the porch with a crossbow, already loading another bolt.
After the second thunk hit the bear in the rib cage, it turned on Nikolai. It reared back, as though to charge Nikolai, but staggered sideways on its feet. For the first time, Taras registered the blood leaking from several wounds he and Nikolai gave it. The bear began to weaken.
Only then did Taras remember the ax on his back. Reaching over his shoulder with his non-injured arm, he slid it from its sheath and let the handle slide through his fingers so he grasped it further down. He pulled his arm back in an arc and slammed the ax into the bear’s rib cage. It took all his strength to yank it back out again while the bear roared and heaved its body from side to side.
The bear’s weight knocked Taras off balance. He slipped on the snow and ended up flat on his back.
Thunk.
The bear’s head swung between Taras and Nikolai, and Taras buried the ax in its abdomen once more. Rather than trying to pull it out this time, Taras crawled backward on one good arm, boots slipping in the snow with each kick. He needed to get out from under the animal. It looked ready to collapse and he didn’t want its full weight falling on him.
Thunk.
Finally, Taras scuttled clear of the animal and used the side of the barn to fight to his feet. Nikolai, completely unharmed and grim-faced, had already loaded another bolt into his crossbow and pointed at the bear.
The animal swayed back and forth, now, looking half-drunk. The pool of crimson blood staining the snow grew nearly as large as the animal itself.
Nikolai stepped closer, pointing his crossbow at the bear’s head and fired—thunk—directly into the temple. The bear collapsed in the snow, kicked a few more times, and finally lay still.
Taras let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d held. He stared at Nikolai, who stared back, lowering his crossbow slowly.
Sound crashed into Taras’s ears. A moment ago, he’d heard only the sound of the bear and his own heart pounding. Everything else fell away, and he didn’t notice. Now the wind came howling back, carrying sounds of Jasper’s frightened screams.
Nikolai dropped the nose of his crossbow toward the ground, turned, and disappeared. Taras wanted to follow. He didn’t have the strength. He needed a few minutes to regain it. He couldn’t take more, though. Many things suddenly needed doing. The barn door needed fixing. They couldn’t leave this bear in the snow. It should be drug into the barn, skinned, and quartered. The bear meat would feed them well through the rest of the winter. Yet this blizzard would not wait on them.
Nikolai reappeared with a thick wolf-skin blanket and threw it across Taras’s shoulders, along with one arm. He attempted to guide Taras toward the cabin.
Taras shook his head. “We need to skin it. Take care of the meat,” he murmured. His voice sounded odd in his own ears. His throat felt raw.
Nikolai nodded. “I’ll drag it into the barn and do it, Papa. I’ll do what I can to fix the door. You must go inside. You’re bleeding. Tend to your wounds and I’ll see to this.”
HOURS LATER, NIKOLAI, looking pale and half-frozen, trudged into the cabin. Snow swirled and eddied behind him. In one arm he held the thick pelt of the bear. He’d performed the skinning masterfully, having gained a lot of practice over the years. Taras hadn’t held any particular skill at tannery when he first came to Siberia. He’d traded many things with the local villagers in return for meat, including survival skills. He made sure Nikolai became skilled in their practice.
“I’ve cut up the meat and put it cold storage, Papa,” he said. “Jasper is much calmer. I boarded up the barn from the inside. We’ll have to climb into the loft to enter. I couldn’t do more with the storm coming. I don’t think we should try to fix or open the barn door until spring.”
Taras nodded. “What about the entrails?”
“I took them to edge of the valley and spread them there.”
Taras raised an eyebrow at Nikolai. “It will bring more predators.”
Nikolai shrugged. “They will take the remains for their meal and have no reason to come near the cabin.”
Taras watched Nikolai move about the cabin. He disappeared into his bedroom and emerged a moment later in dry clothing. He pulled up a stool next to the fir
e and laid the bear skin out on the floor, fur side down, in front of the fire. Taras knew the boy would flesh it before drying it out. A small wooden frame for stretching the pelts of smaller animals sat in the corner, but the enormous bear hide would never fit on it. It would need to lay open on the ground throughout the process.
Taking the entrails to the edge of the valley had been risky. Predators might have smelled the blood and come before Nikolai could drop them at the edge of Anechka and return. Still, the boy held a wisdom Taras did not possess at his age.
“How are you?” Nikolai asked as he worked.
Taras shrugged, then winced when pain lanced through his arm. “I’ll live,” he muttered.
“You’ll have scars,” Nikolai said.
Taras nodded. He already knew. Some years ago, a traveling peddler gave Taras a small looking glass as a gift for letting him stay a few days. A small thing that warped a man’s reflection until he looked ghoulish, it still allowed he and Nikolai to see themselves somewhat.
Taras peered into it when he first returned to the cabin. The bear left deep trenches across his forearm that might or might not heal correctly. Time would tell. If they didn’t, Taras would have limited use of his arm moving forward, though not so much that he couldn’t survive. Enough for life to be different for him, though.
Deep grooves also covered his left eye, beginning near the center of his forehead, they extended down across the hairy tuft of his eyebrow, down across the upper part of his cheek, and stopped in front of his ear. They would most likely scar as well. In truth, Taras felt lucky to have kept his eye. A hair more pressure and the bear might have blinded him entirely.
“Why did you do it, Papa?” Nikolai asked quietly. His hands went still and he stared into the fire, sounding far away.
Taras frowned. “Do what?”
“I know you wanted to save Jasper, but you’ve talked for years now about how old he is. How he won’t live much longer. You risked your life to kill the bear. What if it killed you? Is your life truly worth that of a dying horse?” Nikolai did look at Taras then. “You’ve always taught me to weigh risk against payment. What possessed you to take on this bear today?”
Taras stared into the fire a long time, thinking about how to answer Nikolai. In truth, he didn’t consider his options overly much when he saw the bear. He didn’t weigh risk against payment. He’d seen something evil, the kind of predator he’d hesitated to kill in the past and bore the consequences of.
“I wish I could tell you, Nikolai, that I did weigh the risks and decided the bear needed killing. After successfully breaking down the barn door and eating Jasper, it might have come after us. The cabin is more secure than the barn, of course. Still, it might have paced around the perimeter and held us hostage indefinitely. I pressed my advantage to kill it quickly, when it didn’t see us as a threat.” He slid his eyes sideways to gauge Nikolai’s reaction.
The boy frowned into the fire as he always did when thinking hard about something. After a moment, he nodded. “Your explanation makes sense, Papa. Or would, except you said you wished to tell me that’s what happened. It isn’t truly, is it?”
Taras shook his head. “No, it isn’t. I acted without thinking, which is never a smart thing to do. I did it all the same.”
“I think I know why,” Nikolai said quietly.
Taras arched an eyebrow at his son. How could Nikolai know why, when Taras himself didn’t?
“It’s because of Anne, right? Because you didn’t kill the tiger before it killed her.”
Taras dropped his eyes, a cold stone dropping into his gut.
“I’ve known for a long time that you harbor guilt over it, Papa. You must know the fault didn’t lie with you. You could hardly take on the tiger by yourself in the wilds. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill all three of us that day. Anne wouldn’t have blamed you. Neither do I. You must stop blaming yourself.”
“I’ll stop blaming myself when I manage to kill the beast,” Taras muttered bitterly.
Now Nikolai looked surprised. “You think it’s still alive?”
Taras let out his breath in frustration. “I don’t know. We didn’t kill it. You should never assume something is dead unless you have proof, Nikolai.”
Nikolai nodded. “Of course. But we hurt it badly. In all these years, it’s never returned. It most likely staggered into the woods somewhere and died, dragged away by scavengers.”
Taras sighed. Nikolai’s logic was sound, but Taras wished he’d seen the tiger die. Wished he could be certain. Yet another unfinished thread in his life.
The silence stretched between them for several minutes before Nikolai broke it again. “So that’s it? I am correct about Anne being the reason you took such foolish action today?”
Taras hedged at the reprieve in his son’s voice. Strangely, a note of bitterness inhabited Nikolai’s tone. Nikolai always remained even-tempered.
“Are you so angry at me,” Taras asked quietly, “for wanting to protect Jasper? I don’t know who still lives in Moscow, so he may be my oldest-living friend.”
Nikolai shrugged, studying his hands in his lap. Another oddity. He’d never been shy about looking Taras in the eye. “I am glad Jasper still lives, papa. It all turned out well. We have food to see us through winter.” He raised his eyes and stared Taras angrily in the eye. “If your endeavor to save him resulted in your death, then yes, I’d have been angry at you. Why did you risk leaving me alone here rather than letting the bear have the damn horse? Do you value his life, and your pride over not protecting Anne, above my importance?”
Taras stared at the boy—no! The man. Nikolai became a man in recent years, though he remained a decade younger than Taras had been when he traveled from England to Russia.
“What I did,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully, “didn’t truly have to do with Anne. Perhaps she’s part of it, but not the biggest part. Time and again in my life, Nikolai, I’ve shirked from doing tasks I should have done. And yes, plenty of reasons existed not to perform those tasks. Perhaps it was not practical. Perhaps I would have died in the endeavor. Perhaps some other, understandable reason entirely.
“None of those excuses invalidate the fact that I should have acted. I should have killed the tiger, rather than letting it kill Anne, even if it meant my death.”
Nikolai opened his mouth, obviously ready to object, and Taras quickly raised a hand.
“I’m not saying I wanted to die. Far from it. I should have figured something out. I’m a man of logic and planning. Things animals do not possess. I gave up. Refused to try. Anne died because of it.”
He sighed, studying his wrapped and injured arm. “It’s not the only time I’ve refused to act and watched monsters kill people I loved.”
Nikolai stared at Taras in a discerning way. “I think now you speak of Ivan the Terrible.”
Taras straightened his spine in surprise. The boy’s face remained utterly tranquil. “What makes you think so?” he asked.
Nikolai shrugged. “You’ve told me stories of your youth many times now, Papa. I can recite them all. In English and Russian. I can always tell when you’re being evasive. When there’s something you’re leaving out. I know you feel guilt over things that happened in Moscow. You shouldn’t. You were young, hunting ghosts, doing the best you could. Maybe your woman not coming with you proved for the best.
Taras stared at Nikolai in amazement. He’d never realized how much insight his son held. How much he’d gleaned about things Taras never told him. He knew all about Yehvah and Nikolai, and Inga. Even of Sergei, though Taras didn’t impart that story until Nikolai reached an age to understand it. And of Ivan, of course.
Travelers from Moscow became fewer and farther between as the years passed. They reported Ivan still sitting on the throne and Russia growing darker with each passing year.
Taras stared at Nikolai and Nikolai didn’t look away. With gazes locked, Taras answered again. “I’ve learned that when you see evil in
the world, you must stop it. Often, as with a wild predator, you must kill it. Yes, I learned it from Anne’s death. I also learned it from Nikolai, your namesake. From Inga. And yes, from Ivan the Terrible. He still sits on a throne and destroys people’s lives with every flick of his eyes, not giving them a second thought. If someone had killed him years ago, he wouldn’t be able to.
“And perhaps another would have taken his place on the throne, and been just as evil,” Nikolai said quietly.
Embers popped in the hearth and Taras glanced at them. “I cannot imagine many people attaining Ivan’s level of evil, but if another mad ruler took the throne, he should be dealt with as well.”
“Easier said than done, Papa.”
“Oh, I know, my boy. Believe me, I do. It doesn’t change that this man destroys lives while everyone—myself included—stands around and lets him.”
Nikolai appeared disturbed. Their discussions rarely strayed into such serious subject matter. Talk of his time in Russia made Taras’s chest ache with the old, longing pangs. He still missed Inga. He hadn’t returned to Moscow since that day right after the fire, so he didn’t know how she fared, or whether she did at all. And Nikolai. Did he still live? He’d been a decade older than Taras. Perhaps old age had taken him sometime in the past few years.
“What about Divine Right, Papa?” Nikolai asked. “Isn’t talking about killing God’s anointed ruler blasphemy?”
Taras studied the flames contentedly licking at the logs of Siberian timber. He glanced into the corner of the cabin where he’d set up the home altar and icons. His mother’s ancient carvings of the Holy Mother stood there, along with a cross he’d taken with him when he left Moscow. He’d made sure Nikolai knew his Bible well, and Taras schooled him in the sacraments, though no priest lived out this far to administer them.
Taras dropped his eyes to the floor. “I don’t know what constitutes blasphemy anymore, Nikolai. I don’t believe God could sanction the death of so many and still call himself a merciful god. I don’t know how it applies to Divine Right rule. I only know what I feel: Ivan is evil. And letting a bear kill Jasper, despite his old age, and possibly kill you and me, is unacceptable before God. I will answer to God for my refusal to act where Anne is concerned. The same is true of the Tsar. That’s between me and Him. The only way to redeem myself now is to take action whenever I see evil in the world.”