Captives came into sight, driven along the road. They were young and fainting from exhaustion and hunger: a ragged cluster of Gypsies. Only three High Police, with one horse between them, accompanied the band. No more were needed.
A foot booted in deerskin landed next to Nicolas’s face. He watched as Marja walked out from the trees, stumbled, and joined the troop. A soldier saw her walking apart from the others. “You!” he barked. “Back in line!” Head bowed so that she would not catch his eye, Marja obeyed.
Nicolas and Peter looked at each other. With silent understanding they crept out from their hiding place and joined the stragglers near the back of the line. The soldiers did not see; the captive Gypsies said nothing to give them away. Nicolas took the arm of a limping young boy of fifteen years, face marked by a black cut, and threw it over his shoulder.
Through parched lips the boy said, “Thank you.”
The High Police drove the band down the road for miles, past acres of orchards. The soldiers took turns riding the lone horse and drinking from a heavy wineskin tied to the saddle. Those who were not riding walked around the group, making sure that no one escaped. The sound of the brook running next to the road began to echo in Nicolas’s mind like a cruel taunt. There was water enough to keep the captives alive, but no mercy to give them access to it.
When they were deep in orchard country—land cultivated but still eerily empty of people—the three soldiers met at the head of the procession and whispered amongst themselves. Nicolas narrowed his eyes and concentrated on them, his ears prickling.
“Captain thinks we’re nursemaids…” he heard.
“… could be in Athrom already…”
“Kill them all. No one will know.”
“… wait. The time will come.”
Peter was farther up the line, helping a woman who had soaked her feet falling through a thin layer of ice. Marja was farther still, near the horse which one of the police had remounted. Suddenly, Marja stumbled and fell. She cried out and clutched her ankle, rocking as though she was in pain. Nicolas slipped away from the boy he had been supporting and moved closer to the soldier nearest him.
The line had stopped where Marja fell. The soldier on horseback pointed the tip of his sword at her.
“Get that one up,” he called to one of the other men.
The soldier pushed through the line to the place where Marja crouched, her hands still holding her ankle. “Up with you,” he said.
She turned her dirt-smudged face up and met his eyes calmly. “I can’t walk,” she answered.
“For stars’ sake kill her!” cried the soldier near Nicolas. “We can’t have cripples slowing us down.”
The soldier near Marja reached for his sword, but she was faster. In one fluid motion she pulled the dagger from her boot and sprang to her feet, slashing the soldier across the face. He cried out and reeled back. She snatched his sword from its sheath and drove it into him. He fell to his knees without a sound. She pushed him back with a foot to his chest, and the sword came free.
In the same instant, Nicolas gave a loud whistle and sprang onto the back of the soldier near him. He wrapped one arm around the man’s throat and the other over his eyes, kicking the soldier’s hand away from his sword. They fell to the ground, and Peter appeared, holding a large rock. He drove it into the back of the man’s head. The soldier did not move again.
The last soldier had begun to slaughter the Gypsies around him the instant he saw Marja draw her dagger. He had cut down four of the emaciated captives when Bear, responding to Nicolas’s signal, charged out of the orchard bawling like a fiend. The horse reared in terror, and the soldier lost his sword in the struggle to keep his seat. Nicolas ran to join Bear, brandishing the sword of the man he and Peter had killed, but he was not needed. The horse’s hooves slipped in the mud, and the animal fell, crushing the rider beneath it.
The battle was over almost before it had begun. The Gypsies stood in silence, staring at their rescuers.
Marja wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, smearing blood across her face. She stumbled, and Peter caught her.
“Some of us will never be enslaved,” she said.
* * *
“They rode into our camp in the dead of night. We never suspected danger until they were upon us.”
The Gypsy speaker was a young man, not more than seventeen years old. He was called Darne, he said, and he had belonged to a large band. When he began his narrative he had spoken distantly. Now he spoke with a lump in his throat that threatened to choke out his words.
“They killed the littlest children,” he said. “They killed them so we wouldn’t have any reason to fight anymore. They burned the caravans and cut the horses loose, and drove them through the camp with fire so that our own horses rode down our old men and our little ones. They killed a hundred at least. We who were left were separated into groups. I don’t know what happened to the others. I only know what happened to us. They marched us through the mountains and left the dead ones on the road.”
“Where will you go now?” Nicolas asked.
“To dig our graves,” said the young man.
“No,” Peter said. “You are alive. Don’t give up so easily.”
Darne looked up with anguish in his eyes. “Do you think it has been easy?”
“Dying is easy,” Marja said. “But only a coward chooses to do it when the only enemy before him is himself.”
“Where can we go? We are dead already. Our bands, our caravans, are gone.”
“Go back to the mountains,” Marja said. “Go to Sloczka. There is safety in Pravik.”
“You will not allow us to die, but you would send us to be buried alive?”
“If you cannot face the underground, then stay above and fight. Only stay alive. Stay free.”
The young man hung his head and stared into the blazing fire at his feet. The tree branches above him cast tangled shadows over his dark hair.
“Pravik is far,” he said. “And the way is difficult. We have no horses and no food. We cannot go.”
“If we bring you horses?” Nicolas said. “If we give you food, and weapons—then will you make the journey?”
Darne looked up and searched Nicolas’s face. At last he nodded. “If you will give us the tools, I will lead the people to Pravik while I still live.”
The fire glinted on Marja’s face as she broke into a fierce smile. Peter put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Now you speak like a free man,” he said.
Nicolas opened a feed bag that he had found on the horse’s saddle. The horse had broken its leg in the fall and Peter had killed it, not without a wrench of pain in his own heart. A puff of oat dust filled the air along with the smell of dried oats and hay. Nicolas held the bag up to Bear’s nose.
“Your bear eats oats?” Darne asked.
“Bear eats everything,” Nicolas said. “But he is not mine anymore than I am his.”
“The question is,” Marja asked, “where are we going to find horses enough for you? How many are there?”
“Fifteen,” answered the young man. His voice dropped. “There were thirty when we started.”
“Ten horses should do it,” Peter said. “Some can ride double.”
“There must be a farmhouse around here somewhere,” Marja said. “At the very least we can ask for directions.”
“Why do you say that?” asked the young man.
Marja indicated their surroundings. “Someone owns these orchards.”
“The Emperor himself owns them,” said the young Gypsy. “No one else has owned land around here for decades.”
“All the better,” Nicolas said. “I might feel guilty about stealing from common farmers.”
“Common soldiers or the Emperor Morel himself, you won’t find a kind welcome here,” Darne said. “This is Italya. We are only a few days’ ride from the great Athrom.”
“The last place on earth I have ever wanted to see,” Nicolas said.
“
I would like to see it,” Marja said. “I would like to spit on the ground of it.”
“How many of you are fit to work?” Nicolas asked Darne.
“There are five of us who can still walk without stumbling.”
“Tomorrow we will scout for horses,” Nicolas said. “Three of you come with us. The other two stay here, to watch over the weak and forage for food. This is as safe a hiding place as you could ask for, and there is water.”
Nicolas turned his head at the sound of the running brook. The water was flowing relentlessly downstream. It would go on, whether or not he followed. It took time away with it—his chance to follow receding ever farther south. He felt like a traitor to the water’s call.
But the water had not spoken to him in days, and the Gypsies had.
“I will come back,” he whispered.
“What was that?” Marja asked.
“Nothing,” he answered. “Talking to myself.”
Nicolas sat by the brook late that night, bending a twig in his hands. He threw it and watched as the water caught it, spun it around rocks and over sunken roots, bore it downstream.
“You can’t go now, Nicolas,” said a voice behind him.
He did not turn to look at her. “I don’t mean to,” he said.
“Yes, you do,” Marja said. She sat down. “If you could you would leave this minute.”
“If I could,” he said. “But I can’t.”
“You won’t go until these people are on the road to Pravik?”
“I won’t go until they have what they need.” He took another twig from the ground and twisted it. Snapped it.
“Whatever is down there,” Marja said, “at the end of the river—it can wait for you.”
“Maybe it can’t,” Nicolas said. “Maybe I’m too late already.”
“What is at the end of the river?” Marja asked. “Where is it leading you?”
Nicolas opened his mouth to answer, but he had no words to speak. He looked to the water for answers, but all he could see was his own reflection.
* * *
They left the little camp in the orchard when the first rays of the sun cut down through the chilled air. Nicolas and the fifteen-year-old Gypsy he had helped in the road headed south; Marja and Darne went west. Peter the Pipesmoker took an older, half-deaf Gypsy man east.
They returned after dark to an orchard where nothing stirred. Not even a sigh of air breathed life into the rows of trees with their tangled branches. There was no smoke, no fire, no sign of life. The Gypsies had vanished.
Darne’s face paled as he ran down the row of trees where he had left his people, his eyes searching. For a moment longer silence reigned, and then they appeared, moving like spectres out of the shadows. They spoke in low, smiling voices to Darne, whose relief was clear. They re-lit their fires and settled themselves on the ground, leaning on each other.
“Your lookouts do their job well,” Nicolas told a woman, one of the two Gypsies who had been left in charge of the camp.
She smiled. “Disappearing is an old skill.”
The three scouting parties met again around the main fire, together with a few of the Gypsies who had stayed in the orchard. Nicolas and his teenage companion had found nothing but an empty barn, its floor strewn with dead autumn leaves and moldy straw, old wagon wheels rusting in its yard. Marja had found even less: nothing but farmland for miles.
Peter listened to their recitals with a twinkle in his eye. When at last attention turned to him, he puffed slowly on his pipe, took it out, and said, “We found a ranch. They’re raising horses for the High Police. There’s a hundred of them at least, not more than six miles from here. They’ve provisions enough to send every captive Gypsy on the road to safety in Pravik.”
“And likely guards enough to send them all back again,” Marja said.
“You are not afraid?” Nicolas asked her, a smile playing on his lips.
“No,” she said, and smiled back.
* * *
“I tell you something’s wrong.”
Inside the guardhouse, the soldier paced the length of the table, ignoring the half-finished game of chess.
“Nothing’s wrong,” his fellow answered. He took a long drag on a pipe and moved a pawn forward. “Can’t the horses get antsy without something being wrong? Most likely there’s a storm coming.”
In the corral, another horse whinnied. The wind blew a gate loose from its latch, banging it against the fencing. The first soldier took a drink from a bottle on the table and licked his top lip.
“You hear the wind,” said his partner. “It’s a storm.”
An eerie sound floated through the crack underneath the door of the guardhouse.
“What was that?”
“The wind.”
“It wasn’t.” He set the bottle back on the table with a bang. “Don’t ignore me. Something’s wrong out there.”
“All right,” said his partner. He stood and took a spear down from its resting place along the wall. “We’ll go look. Happy now?”
It had been a warm day, and what little snow lay on the ground had mostly melted off. Mud squelched beneath their feet as the guards made their way to the corral. The loose gate swung and hit the boards of the fence as another gust of wind blew through the ranch. The light from the guardhouse made the gate shine ghostly white in the darkness.
The senior guard made his way to the gate and latched it tightly. Before he had taken his hands from the iron latch, an eerie wail filled the air.
The men looked at each other. A sound in the corral drew their attention. One of the horses was rearing and moving in circles, its ears flat back on its head. The other horses showed similar signs of apprehension.
“I told you something was wrong.”
“There!” The soldier pointed into the darkness beyond the fencing. “Something’s moving there.”
Where he pointed, an almost indistinguishable black shadow was loping back and forth along the fence.
“It’s some kind of animal,” said the guard, and licked his top lip again. “That’s what’s worrying the horses.”
A wail drifted through the night for the third time. “It’s a bloody ghost,” said the senior officer.
Behind them, the lights of the guardhouse suddenly flickered and died. The corral was plunged into darkness.
“Get back,” yelled the senior officer. “Call the alarm.”
They ran for the door of the guardhouse. It was open, as the gate of the corral had been, swinging and creaking in the wind. The light of a single candle ribboned across the floor and out the crack of the door.
The senior officer threw open the door, and his face paled. A ghostly form stood in the guardhouse, candle in hand: an emaciated boy of about fifteen, dressed in rags, a black cut running from his temple to his jaw. The boy looked up at their approach with hollow eyes. He met their stares and did not move.
It did indeed seem to the men that they beheld a ghost, come to bring retribution on those who had caused so much pain to his people. The younger of the soldiers let out a wordless cry and staggered back, but his senior lifted his spear and drew it back to discover whether or not the ghost could bleed.
A strong hand grasped his wrist before he could cast the spear. He cried out in terror. The spear was wrenched from his hand, the shaft driven against the back of his head. He fell to the ground. His partner doubled over as the shaft rammed into his stomach. He caught sight of a slim, fast-moving figure before the wood caught his temple and he crumpled to the floor.
The Gypsy boy took a silver horn from its place on the wall, where it waited to sound the alarm. Together he and Nicolas slipped from the guardhouse into the night. The boy ran for the back of the corral while Nicolas unlatched the gate for the second time.
In the dim moonlight, Nicolas could see the shadow figures of Marja, Peter, and three other Gypsies as they climbed over the fencing and mounted the horses nearest them, calming the creatures with soothing hands and the c
ommanding air of those who know how to ride, bareback and bridle-less, but still in control.
Minutes later, pandemonium erupted at the back of the corral. The silver horn sounded as Bear crashed through a weak place in the fence and rushed on the horses. They panicked. Their hooves thundered through the mud as the exultant cries of the Gypsies filled the air. The invaders herded the animals toward the open gate. Nicolas launched himself from the top of the fence onto the back of a grey stallion. He clutched its mane, tightened his knees, and held on.
High Police, most half-dressed, ran out of the guardhouses and bunking rooms with spears in their hands. They stood in shock as the stampede poured over the ground toward them. With yells of fright and confusion, they threw themselves out of the way. None saw the women who slipped into the abandoned houses and reemerged clutching sacks of food and clothing.
Riders were dispatched two nights later with messages to the officials in Athrom, explaining that one of the province’s finest breeding grounds had been invaded by ghostly riders who drove nearly fifty horses from the corral. Most were recovered the next morning, wandering through farmland and orchards. Only about ten were still unaccounted for. The messages did not mention the missing provisions. The officials at the ranch did not wish to explain what sort of ghosts took bread along with horses.
* * *
They kept the horses in the old barn for a day while Darne consulted with Peter and Nicolas. In the evening, the Gypsies moved out in three groups, each taking a slightly different route through the orchards. Marja had drawn maps showing the way to Pravik—written in symbols that only a Gypsy could understand, and covered with markings to identify friendly wild places where winter berries grew in abundance, red and sweet even through the snow.
Darne and the others thanked their rescuers before they rode out. When they were gone, the barn was left empty and profoundly silent.
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