by Неизвестный
“Freaks or other curiosities found,” he growled low beneath his frozen breath as the driver snapped awake and took notice of him.
“Terrible cold out here,” the driver said. “Haven’t they an inn round here?”
He rubbed his hands together but went rigid when the howls from deep in the wood echoed out over the still, gray afternoon.
“I shall show that officious son of the devil freaks and curiosities,” Evgeny seethed at the startled driver as he climbed into the carriage and slammed the door shut. He then punched the roof and bellowed, “Come on, then—back home.”
“But your man, Gospodin Azhishchenkov . . . ”
“Is dead,” barked Evgeny, as bereaved as he was enraged. “As will you be should you delay me further, you mooncalf. Go.”
The prodigal son was coming home, Hell in his wake. Faces flickered like candle flames in his mind: Rostislav, Yefim, Lev.
So much death.
So much deathlessness.
Koschei was dead—long live Koschei.
All stories seemed somehow true, now.
And as the carriage bounced back to the Tsar’s western city, Evgeny resolved to take His Majesty’s surgeon-in-residence to Nebolchi . . .
. . . or else bring Nebolchi’s damned, as many as he could, to him. For the good of Muscovy, for the need to sate Peter’s great curiosity, for the love of Christ Jesus Almighty—the Neva would run red before Evgeny was rebuffed again, and Rus would fall to an inexorable plague of living corpses not even the Turks could best before the end.
Then, of the whole of the earth Robert Areskin would ask: What is this place?
Like the deathless, Evgeny Tretyakov whimpered and moaned for the preponderance of the journey back to St. Petersburg.
Tantivy
Molly Tanzer
tantivy (tan-TIV-ee)
adv.
At full gallop. To ride tantivy.
exclamation
(Used as a hunting cry when the chase is at full speed.)
“But surely you don’t mean this will be your first time?”
Sir George Partridge’s tone was warm and soft as amber velvet, sweet and rich as whipped syllabub. Only with the utmost difficulty did James keep himself from smiling. If the old fop was already playing at double entendres they might as well pop the champagne and publish the banns.
James checked himself. The thing was not done yet. He still had work to do.
“Indeed, my lord, this will be my first . . . first Wicht-hunt,” replied James, feigning shyness. After a well-timed trembling gasp he took a seat on a convenient rose-upholstered chaise, hoping his pose offered the illusion of innocence, perhaps even swooning. This put Sir George in the position of towering over him, which was James’ purpose. Sir George was famously confident in the seductive power of his arch manners and robust physique. He looked too pleased, too flushed under his powder. James hoped the man would keep drinking claret at the same rate—that would help his chances, too.
“But how can that be?” said Sir George.
“Beg pardon? It is so noisy . . . ”
Sir George lowered himself to sit beside James, a little closer than was needed to be heard even in the loud, crowded parlor. Excellent.
“I asked how could it be that you’ve never been on a hunt before?”
James stuck to the truth. It was easier that way. “Mother forbade it. My eldest brother—he died after being thrown from a horse whilst fox-hunting. I don’t remember it, I was still in swaddling clothes. But after that, you see, Mother refused to let any of the rest of us ride for fear of another tragedy.”
“And your father stood for such nonsense?” The older gentleman took another sip of wine and licked a crimson drop from his lips before cocking a painted eyebrow at James. “Accidents happen all the time. If your brother—God rest his soul—had died of choking on a chicken bone, would your mother have forbidden poultry to be served at table?”
“I could not say, m’lord,” said James. “My mother is very fond of fowl, but she was never one to join the hunt.”
“More Juno than Artemis, then. Well, as is proper, being a wife and mother, I suppose. But what of her son, I wonder?”
“What of me?”
Sir George grinned. “Are you more a Lelantos or a Philomelos? I myself consider Dionysos my patron god, but I have been known to cast my eyes heavenward to do honor to Orion, as I shall do tomorrow.”
What on earth was the old fart on about? “I’m not sure I—”
“A shame. Your Classical education has been neglected. Well, I am an expert on all matters Greek and can help you with that.” Sir George put his hand on James’ knee and squeezed it so hard James winced. But he did not attempt to free himself. He had come as suppliant to Grampnell Hall for this, after all. “I can’t let my sister become affianced to someone uneducated, now can I?”
James’ heart began to pound and he felt the stirrings of panic in his breast; obtaining Miss Aliza Partridge’s substantial dowry was the only hope for his family’s finances. Here he’d been convinced he was doing well in his suit, but if he went and soured this interview the family’s debts would . . . he couldn’t think about that, not now. He had to concentrate on the task at hand, perhaps by further playing up his eagerness to become husband to Miss Aliza Partridge and wife to her brother. James could only parlay his sole inheritance, his handsome countenance, after all.
“My apologies, Sir George, my education has not been of the highest—”
“Oh. come now. James, I’m just teasing you. My expectations of you are quite low.” Sir George sighed as if suddenly bored. He snapped for a servant to refill his glass. “She loves you, and that matters more to me than anything.”
“Really, sir?” James thought he might choke on his false cloying sweetness.
“Within reason.” Sir George stood and went over to the window overlooking the eastern side of the vast estate. James followed him. “It’s devilish fun, Wicht-hunting. Better by far than chasing reynards. I insist you ride with us. On a hunt a man shows his true cloth.”
James did not feign his shudder of revulsion. He wasn’t afraid of doing what he must to win over Sir George when it came to the boudoir, but he knew enough of Wicht-hunting, the blood-sport à la mode, to know it sounded utterly dreadful. Riding down a quarry that looked human—had been human, once—seemed ghastly.
“My sister has always been attracted to sensitive souls, “ remarked Sir George. “If you are to pluck Miss Partridge—for my sister will, I assure you, make quite a mess of all the pretty wedding-linens I’ll be forced to pay for—you will have to inure yourself to a bit of screaming.” He smiled when James raised an artful handkerchief to obscure an equally artful expression of alarm. “You seem more frightened than excited about the wedding-bed, my boy. Doesn’t the prospect of riding Aliza ragged please you? Why, just look at her.”
James glanced across the busy parlor to the lovely girl in a mantua that was, oddly, the same blue-green of her brother’s eyes. She was whispering something to James’ second-youngest sister, Elinor, as they stood together, giggling and colluding as if they were the only two at the party. Well, good show, Elinor. Aliza’s affection for the chit could only help James.
“She is extremely lovely,” admitted James, but he bit his lip as he turned back to Sir George. “It’s just . . . I should hate to hurt her, even a little—even once.”
His host leaned closer. Those gaudy, painted lips almost brushed James’ cheek. “See here, my boy, tomorrow, on the hunt, you must ride with me, it will be safer that way for you, I think. You can follow my lead, and I’ll show you how it’s done. And once you’ve heard the horns blowing, the hounds baying, whipped a horse into a lather in pursuit of your quarry—well perhaps after that you’ll find the prospect of hard riding more . . . appealing.”
“Appealing” had less than nothing to do with the matter, mused James, as Sir George staggered off to greet another of his many guests. Even if Aliza ha
d been born with a hound’s face and her brother a tail, needs must when the Devil drives.
Galloping full-tilt after the hounds was rather fun, James decided, as his bay gelding leapt over a low thicket, hot on the heels of Sir George’s black stallion. The morning air was bracing, the smell of grass and heather churned up by hoof and paw and foot pleasing, his thighs ached pleasantly from the horse exercise over the green rolling hills.
Best of all, the hounds had yet to scent a single Wicht.
Sir George was out of sorts about the situation. A flop of a hunt would haunt him, socially speaking. He had bragged so often of stocking his grounds with those who had fallen prey to that awful plague sweeping across the noblesse’s Jamaica plantations that if no Wicht could be flushed out he was at risk of becoming a laughingstock. Not that James particularly cared about the man’s reputation, only his purse strings.
The dogs snuffled and barked and whined and frolicked to no end. Everyone in the hunting-party looked very disappointed indeed, but James hoped things would continue on in this manner. Eventually the nobles would get bored, and then they could go back and eat dinner without his having to watch the dogs tear what had so recently been a human limb from limb.
“I say,” shouted a gentleman in a blue coat, as they reined up at the edge of a thick wood, “this is rather rum, eh, Sir George? They’re not tricky devils like foxes, you know, to hide and put the hounds off their scent. Could someone have poached all your game?”
“Bronson would have noticed,” shouted Sir George back at the man, but all the same James thought he looked worried.
Then Sir George’s prize bitch scent-hound, who had been sniffing back and forth along the wood’s edge, put her nose in the air and bayed excitedly. All the dogs raced to her side, plunging as a single great panting yelping body into the forest. The gentleman and few ladies of the hunting party (Aliza and Elinor had surprised James by tagging along) cheered, the master of the hunt blew his horn, and all spurred their horses into the brush.
James alone hung back, keeping his bay at a walk as they entered the shadowy forest, one hand holding onto his hat so no stray bough would knock it from his head. His father had been forced to settle some debts by selling most his stables when James was just a boy, and as a result he was not the surest of riders even over good terrain—to say nothing of dense woodland.
That, and he hoped Sir George, who had promised so ardently to look after him, would notice his absence and come back. Alone. James was willing to bet that a bored, rich molly like Sir George would be charmed by lovemaking al fresco, and his place would be secured.
Once under the trees the day felt darker, almost solemn, as the noisy hunting party moved out of earshot and the woods pressed in around him. He neither heard nor saw animals about and told himself that even songbirds would be frightened off by baying hounds. The only sounds were the champing and tramping of his horse and his own light breathing. It was almost eerie, the silence, and the mist, churned up by the bay’s slow hoof-falls, looked ghostly and strange.
James came into a small clearing and reined in his horse. He wished he could have brought a sword, but it was not tradition. The dogs would do the work for the hunting-party, rending the Wicht to pieces while their masters remained on horseback. It had struck him suddenly that there was a potential problem with this particular gambit: If a Wicht were to break from one of the deeper thickets, startling his horse into stumbling or throwing him, no one would be there to help. Indeed, no one would know, not for hours. It was an unsettling thought—and it preoccupied him so wholly that when a dark shape crashed into the clearing he screamed and nearly lost his seat.
“Why, it’s only me, James,” said Sir George, when James had recovered himself. He wore an unsettling smile that did not entirely put the image of those poor plague-victims who had died and then risen again, hungry for flesh, out of James’ mind. “I lost sight of you and came back to make sure you were all right.”
James sighed in genuine relief. “Please don’t think less of me, Sir George, but galloping through a wood was nothing I felt myself capable of.”
“No?”
“I’m . . . not the most experienced rider.” Sir George wasn’t the only master of the entendre at Grampnell Hall.
Sir George laughed, and then, to James’ joy, swung himself out of the saddle. “Come down off of that horse for a moment, my lad,” he said, offering James his hand as he struggled off the tall bay. “Rest your legs. The party’s gone ahead and we shall have some quiet time together—we should have some, do you not think, if we are to be brothers?”
“If you say so, Sir George.”
“I do say so.”
The day was cool, but it was James’ shiver of victory that prompted Sir George to gallantly offer him his coat—and several nips from his flask of Armagnac. The fine brandy warmed James quicker than the large hunting frock, and it smelled better too, but it also made him far more relaxed than he thought safe. He refused further tipples. Things could still go wrong, he had to play his part as best as he could—so when Sir George proposed they sit a spell under a linden tree and enjoy the peaceful morning, James agreed readily.
“I don’t think we shall make a huntsman out of you, my boy, but that’s all right,” said Sir George.
“Is it?”
“Yes, yes, of course. All we shall require of you is that you get sons on my sister.”
The man was a liar, but James pretended ignorance. “I . . . will do my best to fulfill all my duties to your family . . . if I am to become a part of it, of course.”
“All your duties?” Sir George settled in beside James, hesitated, then to James’ surprise instead of making a move, he tilted James’s face upward by the chin to look right up at him. “My boy, you . . . seem like a nice young man. I wonder—rather, I find myself wondering . . . ”
Here it is at last, thought James. “Sir George?”
But Sir George was hesitating further; the man seemed genuinely nervous! How queer. From everything James’ mother told him before putting him and his sister into a rented coach to attend this ghastly summer hunting-party, James should have found it challenging to keep the man off him with a cudgel and three trained mastiffs.
“I am well aware that your family’s situation puts you into a difficult position,” Sir George said in a hushed tone, as if fearful of being overheard. “You must marry well, as your sisters, while beautiful, have nothing to offer a man of means—less than you, and that is saying quite a lot.”
James opened his mouth to protest the implication, but Sir George did it for him.
“I’m not saying you don’t love my dearest Aliza; your attentions toward her are clear enough. But . . . I’ve noticed your attentions toward me, and if they are done out of interest—I know my reputation—I should hate to take advantage of you, dear boy. I may have appetites, but they are . . . if not pure, then at least they are honest. I am not interested in what is unwillingly given. If you have made up to me to secure your situation with Aliza, tell me now and I shall leave you be and bless your marriage just the same. You’re her choice, for whatever reason, and I am no ogre. But . . . but if you be true, and want me . . . ”
Sir George’s honesty so unsettled James he found himself at a loss for words. He turned away, partially to hide his features less they show guile, partly to think clearly without that man staring him down.
James desired Aliza purely for her dowry, nothing more. Indeed, given his choice he would be more inclined to welcome Sir George’s advances (well, if the man had been three stone lighter and a decade younger) but that adage about beggars and choosing was all too true. No, he could not afford to trust in Sir George, no matter how sincere the man seemed, and so instead of confessing all, he turned back with a shy smile on his face,
“I find myself at a crossroads, and do not know which path to walk,” he said so softly Sir George had to lean in close to hear him. “Both of you are so wonderful, so beautiful, so—oh dear G
od!”
Sir George hastily buttoned up his breeches but it wasn’t the sight of the man’s admittedly enormous cockstand that had so alarmed James. No, it was the pair of filmy, hungry, dead eyes winking at him from the linden-boughs; the skeletal, naked body, the clutching, bony hands and feet that dug into the wood of the tree as it perched there. Lank hair framed its awful face, and its open mouth was full of blackened teeth. James had had no warning of its approach. How the deuce had something so rotten moved through the branches so quietly?
“Sir George,” whispered James. He’d been so focused on his future prospects that he’d completely forgotten his current peril: This wood was, after all, deliberately stocked with horrible monsters! “A . . . it’s a Wicht, look there, it—”
“Good heavens!” cried Sir George. He leaped to his feet, stumbling in his haste to gain the musket lying against a tree to their left. He flailed, but though hardy, his not-insubstantial weight was against him and he fell into the side of his black stallion. The spirited animal reared and screamed; Sir George backed away from its slashing hooves but stopped when the Wicht screamed too, a disgusting throaty sound.
Then half a dozen more pairs of eyes in drawn, cadaverous faces were staring at them from every direction.
The gun was no use now, if it ever really had been, so in desperation James took off running for the edge of the forest. He had no idea how fast the creatures were, so he ran pell-mell through the brush, heedless of the thorns that tore his jacket and branches that cut and whipped his face. When Sir George caught up with him, looking far worse for the tribulations of the dense forest and the running, James felt a brief flash of guilt—he had left Sir George to his fate but if there was any time that the philosophy of “every man for himself” might be ethical it was when a herd of flesh-eating monsters had silently surrounded you.
He skidded to a halt when he heard a sound like baying—perhaps the hunting party had returned for them—but then realized the ululating yelps were nothing like a hound-pack. The Wicht were calling to one another, they were behind him and to his right, so he zig-zagged away from them as quick as he could, waving at Sir George to follow.