“Indeed? Then you can start from tomorrow, Prince Ivan, since today’s too well past. And you can sleep in the stable, so they can get to know you. But from the looks of you, and the sounds your guts are making—” Ivan blushed and rubbed his stomach, “—you should eat before you sleep.”
She went into the hut while Ivan fought down his desire to run away, and when she came back there was a bowl and a platter in her hands. The bowl held steaming wheaten kasha with a hunk of black bread on top, and there was meat on the platter. “Eat,” she said, “and then sleep sound. Don’t worry; you’ll come to no harm, that I promise you. Not until you fail.” Ivan looked at the food, and then at Baba Yaga, and made his thanks as courteously as if she had offered him a royal feast. “Just a little something to make you fatter,” she said and laughed. “I hate lean meat.” Then she went into her hut again, and closed the door.
Ivan stared at the hut for several seconds, then walked across the awful clearing to the long, low stable in the shadow of the trees. It was full of handsome horses, all staring at him with as much amusement as a horse can ever show. Ivan looked at them, already wondering which one would cause most trouble, and which one he would choose, and then sat down on the ground to eat his food.
The black bread was a good sour rye such as he’d seen before, so he ate it without a second thought, and the kasha too. But not the meat. It smelt as savoury as good roast pork but, after what Baba Yaga had said and seeing that fresh head on its spike, he would have left this meat well alone even without the queen bee’s warning buzzing in his mind. Not caring whether the old hag could see him or not, he dug a little hole beside the stable wall and buried every piece of it.
Tsarevich Ivan lay awake for a long time that night, with his eyes wide open, staring at the dark, and every time he thought of the next day, he shivered.
CHAPTER NINE
Concerning Baba Yaga’s country beyond the fiery river, and how Prince Ivan guarded her herd of horses
Koshchey the Undying wanted to die.
It wasn’t a sincere wish, as such wishes sometimes went; but on the morning after he’d so rashly tried to drink Mar’ya Morevna underneath the table, he woke up with a pounding in his head that felt like the very wrath of God. He was sick in his stomach, and giddy in his brain, and there was a taste and feeling in his mouth as though Tatars had been camping there. Death would have been far preferable. At least dead people weren’t hung over. Though he tried throughout the morning to go about his business, there was no point to it, and at last he lay back groaning on his bed, the window-shutters and his eyes both closed tight to keep the sunlight from scorching hot holes through his skull.
Mar’ya Morevna had made matters worse, for instead of creeping about and groaning as he had done, she’d been bright and merry. Appallingly so. For one thing, she’d picked that day to sing. Koshchey had seen her, and what was far worse, heard her.
Mar’ya Morevna was indeed the fairest Princess in all the Russias, but there had never been a rule that beauty of face meant beauty of voice. She had a fine contralto, but no one had ever trained its ragged edges, and yelling orders to her armies above the roar of battle had done nothing to improve its sweetness. But it was good enough for Mar’ya Morevna, and what she lacked in quality she enhanced with volume.
She sang as she took her morning walk along the ramparts of the kremlin, which was acceptable enough since much of the music dispersed out on the open air to frighten passing birds. But she continued to sing as she clattered about the tiles and floorboards of the kremlin in a pair of red-heeled boots that struck the echoes back and forth from every wall, and whenever she came to a door, she slammed it. Koshchey could hear the slamming now as she worked her way along the halls below his chamber, making sure that each door swung smoothly on its hinges and could close just as quick and hard as her strong right arm could push it.
Koshchey the Undying rolled moaning onto his queasy belly, and pulled the pillows and the bolster down around his ears.
*
That morning Ivan was awake before Baba Yaga began to stir. Despite her promise that he would be safe until he failed in whatever tasks she chose to set him, he felt uncomfortable about being asleep while she was creeping about. Ivan had spent an uneasy, restless night with one hand on the hilt of his sword, and had learned yet another truth that the old stories didn’t mention. All of the heroes who slept that way woke refreshed, but he had barely slept at all, and the only parts that had gone to sleep were the muscles of his sword-arm. He sat in the straw of the stable, rubbing pins and needles from his fingers and well aware that Baba Yaga’s horses were staring at him with the expression of people enjoying a malicious private joke at his expense.
He stared right back at them, thinking of Koshchey’s riding-whip still through his belt and knowing from experience that besides being magic, it was also a good whip. The horses seemed to know what he was thinking, and several of them curled back their upper lips in either an equine sneer or a deliberate display of teeth as big and yellow as those of any other horse but far more sharply pointed.
Ivan looked at the teeth, and though they weren’t the dreadful iron teeth in Baba Yaga’s rat-trap mouth, he wondered what these horses ate apart from grass and hay. Horses that ate men weren’t unknown in the old stories, and he’d seen enough already that his doubts about anything any more were well set aside. Herding horses like these might prove more difficult than he suspected, and he was glad to have his sword as well as Koshchey’s whip.
Baba Yaga flung the stable door wide open. Whether it was just to waken him or an attempt to catch him sleeping, Ivan didn’t know. What he did know was that he’d seen more pleasant things first thing in the morning. She looked no more beautiful in the thin, sharp sunshine of dawn than she had looked in the warm light of evening and, as he stood up, Ivan made sure his sword was in plain sight.
Baba Yaga looked at the sword, then at him, and smiled with all her frightful teeth. “Ah, Prince Ivan,” she said, “your sword won’t help you herd my horses well, and it won’t save you if you herd them badly. Why not leave it with me, safe from harm?”
Ivan grinned an unpleasant little grin at Baba Yaga. He saw no more reason for politeness than did she, since every conversation they’d exchanged had been a sort of fencing match. Baba Yaga would kill and eat him if she got the chance, and Ivan was determined that she wouldn’t get such a chance. That was why he grinned; and why he slapped the scabbard of his sabre so that the sharp-edged curve of metal within it clinked and rattled ominously. “Thank you, Grandmother,” he said, “but I prefer to keep it close to hand. That way we both stay safe from harm. It was a present from my brothers, and they’d be displeased if I didn’t carry it as they intended. All the time.”
Baba Yaga’s smile faded. “Then carry it,” she said. “But take care it doesn’t weigh you down, for you’ll find you need to run a lot when you herd my horses.”
“Perhaps, and perhaps not. Horse-herders ride, the better to keep up with their charges. So which one do I take?” Ivan spoke with less courtesy than he would normally use towards an old lady, even one as repulsive as Baba Yaga. Mar’ya Morevna had been unable to learn how Koshchey the Undying gained his horse, but Ivan would wager gold that it hadn’t been through sweetness and asking nicely.
Baba Yaga glowered at him from under her bristly white eyebrows. Her hooked nose and wispy-bearded chin were close to meeting in the middle, and her lipless mouth pressed so tightly shut that it all but disappeared. “Your manners aren’t what they might be, Prince Ivan,” she said at last. “Beware your sharp tongue doesn’t cut your throat!”
“I merely act as present company dictates,” said Ivan, not much disturbed by yet another threat and sure he still had better manners than Koshchey, when Old Rattlebones was here on the self-same business. “‘If you live with the wolves’, says the proverb, ‘then howl like the wolves.”
He thought of the wolf he had encountered in the forest, and realize
d that despite how grim and dangerous she was, he would rather be in her company than that of Baba Yaga. At least Mother Wolf smelt clean.
The red glare in Baba Yaga’s eyes was almost enough to set the stable straw on fire. There was an ugly promise in the way she looked at him, that he would beg for the mercy of the carving-knife and cook-pot before she was done. “If we’re to bandy proverbs, little Prince, then you should have remembered this one: ‘If you find yourself in a pack of dogs, bark or don’t bark, but always wag your tail.’ ”
Ivan shook his head. “Would tail-wagging like a submissive cur change your intentions for me, Baba Yaga? And would it help me at all if I started now? No, for preference I’ll howl and show my teeth.”
“Oh, you’ll howl before your course is run, Prince Ivan,” said Baba Yaga, grinding her iron teeth together. “You’ll howl indeed.”
“Enough of that!” snapped Ivan with no more pretence at courtesy, his tone now that of a Tsar’s son speaking to a dirty peasant. “I asked before: which horse do I ride when herding the rest?”
“Take your pick, Prince Ivan.” She indicated the horses, who’d been watching their exchange of barely-veiled insults with every sign of amusement. “My rules are very simple, so simple that even you should remember them. You’ll serve me for three full days. On each of those days all my horses must be back in their stalls by sunset, or your head goes on a spike,” she licked her lips, “and I’ll serve you.”
Ivan had known more or less what she would say ever since the horrid fence and palisade around the clearing. He had thought that when the words were finally spoken they would be no more than words, but he was wrong. His stomach gave a little flutter, and a shudder went crawling down his spine as if what Baba Yaga said had come as a complete surprise. Perhaps it was the look on her face, or her eagerness – or just the way a trail of drool ran down her chin.
He selected a horse, and even though a Prince and Tsar’s son might have ridden the best of them, he chose one of the mares rather than the stallion of the herd. Tsarevich Ivan had been taught horsemanship and weapon-craft by Guard-Captain Akimov, who was Don Cossack on his father’s side and Kuban Cossack on his mother’s. Given how the Cossacks fought each other, that had surely been a marriage and alliance forged on the hottest hearths of Hell.
It was from his parents that Guard-Captain Petr Mikhailovich Akimov learnt the arts of fighting and survival – by all accounts his home life had been an education in itself – but it had been from his other relatives on both sides, those not involved in feuding, that he’d learned to handle horses. The Cossacks could ride anything on four legs, and equally they knew what sort of mount to avoid. Solitary stallions, masters of a herd of mares, were one such. Ivan had been warned, time and again, that even ordinary stallions could be notoriously intractable and vicious. Baba Yaga’s herd-leader, as intelligent as all the rest, was most likely actively malevolent. A quiet little mare would be good enough.
There were many saddles, bridles and whips on their racks along the wall. Ivan picked the sturdiest harness he could find, since a ‘quiet little mare’ from this horse-herd might prove a bigger handful than the fiercest charger he had ever ridden. But he didn’t need a whip; Koshchey’s long-lashed nagayka was still pushed like a dagger through his belt, and nothing Baba Yaga’s stable had to offer could have matched it.
To his surprise, the chestnut mare accepted bit and bridle, then the saddle and his weight, without a trace of protest. Though he endeavoured not to show it, Ivan was pleased. This was where he had suspected his first trouble might occur, because Baba Yaga wouldn’t simply let him herd her horses for three days then choose the best of them and ride away. It was the whip that quieted the mare, even though he hadn’t used it. The braided lash smelt of Koshchey Bessmertny’s brutal use of it on his own steed, the one he owned and supposedly took care of. Koshchey would have lashed Baba Yaga’s horses even more, since whipping them meant the difference between a mount under his saddle or a stake under his chin.
Ivan gripped the mare’s well-fed barrel chest between his knees and looked down at Baba Yaga. “Where do your horses graze?” he asked, feeling more at ease.
“Take them to pasture in the meadow,” said Baba Yaga, smiling. “Follow yonder path until you reach another clearing, and there it lies.” She pulled back the stable door and the horses streamed out, tossing their manes and neighing loudly, glad to be in the open air once more. “But remember what I told you, Prince Ivan. Lose a single one and I’ll use your head to decorate my fence!”
Ivan didn’t reply, already busy counting the number of horses he was supposed to guard. Despite the way they milled about between the stable and the fence and sometimes galloped underneath the hen-legged hut for no reason other than high spirits, he could see no more than twenty. With the one he rode, that made twenty-one, and with Koshchey’s whip to aid him the task was hard but not impossible.
“Here,” said Baba Yaga, throwing him a parcel wrapped in a cloth. “Good food for a good day’s work.” Ivan caught the parcel warily, not certain what Baba Yaga would regard as proper rations and unwilling to find out. “Bread,” she said scornfully, seeing the expressions chase one another across his face. “Black bread, and mares’-milk cheese, and a horse-hide leather bottle of kumys. If you’ve ever met a Tatar, you ought to know how those will taste. Food proper to a guardian of horses, little Prince. But I’ll waste no more meat on one too squeamish to enjoy it; and when I have a fresh supply you won’t be here to help me eat it.”
The point went to Baba Yaga, well and wickedly scored, and Ivan scowled down at her from the horse’s back, aware – as was she – that the mare was by no means big enough to give his glare its full effect. Such an expression needed a tall charger, brightly burnished rings of mail, a spired helmet with a nasal to stare past, and perhaps a spiked mace swung with all the strength of his right arm to drive the lesson home. But instead he waited until his anger cooled then looked long and hard at Baba Yaga, who met his gaze grinning.
“This between me and all harm,” he said, “and between me and you for always and always.” Then he made the sign of the life-giving cross over himself, devoutly, brow to belt-buckle, right shoulder to left, and Baba Yaga hissed like a scalded snake while her iron teeth ground together like shears being sharpened.
Ivan didn’t smile at his small victory, for it would have been improper. The cross of the White Christ was a sign of the triumph of light over dark, but it was no more Ivan’s doing than any other sign he might have made. Half a hundred years ago, in Novgorod the Great, he would have made the spread-fingered sun-sign for bright Belebog and Svarog of the All-seeing Sky, for fiery Svarovich his son and for Dazhbog bringer of summer. Three hundred years and more past that, among his long-fathers the Norsemen, he would have made the sign of the hammer to honour red-bearded Thorr the Thunderer, or covered one eye in respect to deep-minded Allfather Othinn, Lord of the Battle-slain.
Ivan shivered, and shook his head as thoughts uncalled-for ran like ice-melt through his brain. Where will I go when at last I truly die? he wondered. To Christ’s Heaven, or beyond the sky, or the halls of the old gods? He was afraid as no man who has not already died can fear – but good or ill, heaven or hell, he knew that eternity was of little account unless he could spend it with Mar’ya Morevna. Far away from her and in peril of his life, it was too easy to slip into that dark melancholy which was the plague of the Rus, and for which vodka and jollity were the only cure.
There was no vodka here, nor jollity either.
*
Mar’ya Morevna paused a moment to massage the pounding in her temples, to drink down several beakers of cold water, and to eat the best part of a roasted chicken. She felt far less bright and merry than Koshchey suspected, but would have died of shame and black affront before letting him to know it. The amethysts of last night and the small spells said over them had done much to save her from how he was feeling. The quickness of her hand in spilling much of what she
seemed to drink had been good as well, and her wisdom had been best of all.
Mar’ya Morevna was a commander of armies, and had learned a great deal during her campaigns about keeping a clear head in the morning. Water was one part, food was another, and sleep was a third. Since it was out of her control she had dismissed her concern for Ivan to a quiet corner of her mind, then gone to bed and slept as well as she was able.
And then she had got up next morning and set about distracting Koshchey the Undying by indicating to him that though he had her as his prisoner, he wasn’t going to enjoy it. The more he was concerned with his aching head, and with all the noises clanging through his kremlin, the less he would wonder about questions that no widowed prisoner had need to ask. Because what would happen if he did begin to wonder, and remember, was something that Mar’ya Morevna preferred not to think about…
*
Ivan found another cure for melancholy when he and the horse-herd reached the meadow, for that was when all of the mares, and the stallion too, flipped up their tails and galloped off in as many directions as there were horses in the herd. The mare under him reared up on her hind legs, so high that for an instant he thought that she would topple back with him beneath. That was when he snapped the long plaited lash of Koshchey’s whip against her rump. Without Koshchey’s long, cruel practice it didn’t even break her glossy chestnut skin, but it still felt like the biggest horsefly in all the Russias and convinced her not to complete that crushing backward fall.
The mare’s forefeet slammed back against Moist-Mother-Earth with a solid impact that only Ivan found comforting, and then her head swung around so that one eye could stare at her rider. There was a dull red glow within it, but after staring into the furnace eyes of Koshchey’s great black steed, this glow wasn’t enough to warm his hands. He reeled in the yard-long whiplash and doubled it until the plaited strips of leather creaked one against the other, then met the mare’s red eye stare for stare. Whether she could talk or not was of no concern to him right now, but from the look in her eye he felt certain that she could understand good Russian spoken clearly.
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