“Behave,” he said like a schoolmaster, “or you’ll smart all day.”
The mare snorted noisily, blowing out her lips and spattering Ivan’s red-heeled boots with the green froth of a horse who had been sneaking mouthfuls of grass past her bit. He looked at the mess and decided he could live with the clash of colours.
“Good,” said Ivan to the mare, “we understand one another. So understand this also: we’re going to pursue your stablemates. And if I think that you’re giving less than your best effort, I’ll get that effort out of you with this.”
He let the long lash uncoil again, then snapped it a little down by the ground, cutting the tips from grass-blades and no worse. An ordinary horse might have started from the noise, but the mare just turned her head to study the whip, then back again to stare at Ivan. He didn’t like the way she showed her sharp, unhorselike teeth at him, it was too much like Baba Yaga’s grin, but he hadn’t warned the mare off threats. Not yet.
“One other thing,” he said, tucking the whip-stock through his belt in its customary place. “If you’re thinking you could bite off my kneecap—” he smiled crookedly as guilt flickered through the mare’s red eye, “—just bear in mind that I could have your head off.”
Free of the whip’s encumbrance, his right hand drew his sabre from its scabbard too fast for the mare to follow. All she could have seen was that his hand went in an eyeblink from empty to full of sharp blade. This time she did start, whether from the movement or the spoken warning. Ivan didn’t care. At least she had taken note of both.
*
The horses of Baba Yaga had run all across the wide meadow at the edge of the forest, and in every direction; but it was clear they hadn’t reckoned on Prince Ivan still being astride one of their own. Without striking the mare more often or harder than he might have rapped an ordinary dumb horse like his own lost Burka, Ivan rode from north to south and east to west across the flat pasture-land, gathering the horse-herd together with all the skill of a Tatar or Cossack born to the work.
It was almost noon before he rounded them up, and some of the loose horses needed more than just a tap from the rolled nagayka whip. One, the stallion, leader of the herd and determined to prove it, came at Ivan squealing, lips curled back from his great teeth so that their unsightly sharp points glistened like the fangs of a wolf. Ivan let him make his charge and then, with heels and knees and one hand on the reins, he made his own mount sidestep as neatly as a dancer. The stallion went barging past with ears flat back and eyes half-closed and got his first lesson in manners as a stripe between his tail and withers that would take a week to fade.
“Enough?” said Ivan as the stallion bucked at the sting, and poised the whip behind his shoulder. Black and bright as broken coal and with a heart as dark and hard, the stallion of the herd skidded around on long torn tracks of soil with his head lowered like a bull. “You’re a fine creature,” Prince Ivan told the black stallion, watching as he might watch any other armed and deadly enemy, “and I’ve no desire to hurt you – but you’ll get over this lash sooner than I’ll get over being trampled.”
They stared at one another for several minutes, neither moving, neither willing to grant his adversary any advantage, until quite suddenly the stallion blew through his distended nostrils then ducked his head down and began to crop the grass. Ivan didn’t relax for some seconds after that, and the too-quick pounding of his heart took many minutes more before it became slow and normal again. He knew quite well that if he’d been on foot, either he wouldn’t have caught the horse-herd in the first place, or the stallion would have bitten and pounded him into something like the chopped raw mutton which the Tatars ate, which was no fit state in which to meet Mar’ya Morevna again.
Ivan thought about what she would say to him if he dared appear in such a condition, and grinned a more wholesome grin than had crossed his face since he first came to Baba Yaga’s country.
He was still grinning when the mare began to rear again, then changed halfway to a head-down back-arching buck that flung Tsarevich Ivan and the saddle both together to the ground. His knees were still clamped tight around the saddle-flaps, his feet still though the stirrups, but there was no horse under him any more. He hit the soft ground of the meadow with a jarring thud, saw all the stars of a clear night in winter, and rolled up through those stars with Koshchey’s whip in one hand and his sabre in the other, mindful of far too many teeth and hoofs.
There was no attack. Instead the horses stood around him, far enough away to be well out of reach, and gloated over his humiliation. Ivan had been thrown by horses far too many times not to realize that there were some who took malicious pleasure in the act, but these…
These were Baba Yaga’s horses, with the wit of men at all times, and the speech of men when they saw fit, and though they didn’t speak or even neigh and whinny it was plain they were laughing at him. Not because he’d been thrown from his mount, but because of what that throwing meant. They would eat a richer mash tonight because of it.
Ivan’s stomach clenched as it had done when Koshchey the Undying dropped his sabre at his feet and dared him to bend and pick it up. At least Koshchey hadn’t given him from noon till sunset to think about his fate: but Baba Yaga’s horses weren’t men or even creatures in the shape of men, and expecting human feelings from them was like expecting warmth from frost.
Ivan’s mare was standing closest, the imprint of the saddle still plain against her hide, and as he watched she grinned like a dog, spat the bit out past her teeth and shook her head until the bridle’s buckles came undone and the whole thing fell away. Ivan looked at the bridle, at the girth-straps of the saddle still entangled round his feet, and then at the mare.
“You could have done this at any time you pleased,” he said, too dazed and startled for anger.
“Of course,” said the mare, speaking for the first time. “But this way gives more satisfaction, when you thought you had caught us all. Poor Prince Ivan!” Though her words were sympathetic, the way in which she said them was most definitely not. “You believed your task was easy. You thought wrongly, and your belief was false. And because of those mistakes, tonight you will die. Until we meet you again, chopped fine among the hay in our manger, we bid you farewell!”
They merrily raised their tails and pranced off at a high-stepping canter, not troubling even to gallop, and mocking him with neighing laughter the whole way across the meadow. Then they stopped and insolently began to graze, though every now and again one would lift its head to watch him.
An impulse to run madly after them shot like a cramping spasm through all the muscles in his body, but he resisted, knowing that was what they hoped he would do so they could laugh at him some more. Instead Ivan pulled the parcel of food from the wreckage of his saddle and unwrapped it. With the black loaf of Baba Yaga’s bread held out as enticement, he walked towards the mares with the same slow, unthreatening pace as any thrown rider trying to catch his loose mount. The horses watched unconcerned until he was close but not close enough and then scattered in a flurry of manes and tails, to regroup and graze again just out of reach.
By the fifth, or tenth, or hundredth time it happened, Ivan was trembling all over with rage and hatred of the horses and with a steadily increasing fear for what remained of the day, and his life. That time seemed now as short, and its end as certain, as any man who hears the scaffold being built outside his cell. Wild thoughts and wilder hopes went to and fro in his mind: perhaps if he went into the woods and skirted the meadow out of sight, he could catch one of the horses and ride bareback to round the others up; or perhaps he could reach the river of fire on foot, summon the bridge with Koshchey’s whip and make his escape; or perhaps he could creep back to the hut in the clearing and kill Baba Yaga before she killed him.
And perhaps he could just hide on the far side of the moon, for that scheme was as likely as the others.
Closer than ever before, Ivan flung the useless loaf of bread aside and
made a sudden dash at the small mare which had been his mount until she threw him. The mare reared back and sidestepped just as she had done with Ivan on her back to avoid the charging stallion, and he fell full-length on the ground. She paused just long enough to eat some of the loaf and stamp its remnants into the soil, then snickered derisively and trotted away.
Ivan lay where he had fallen, too weary even to feel anger any more. He was exhausted by his efforts, and still more by grief and fear and hunger. That loaf so casually destroyed by the mare had been, with the bread and kasha of last night, the only food he’d seen in near enough three days. The cheese and the bottle of kumys were somewhere on the wide meadow, but it was so great and they so small that by the time he found them Ivan knew he would have no more need of food or drink.
All that remained to him was black depression, born of the knowledge that he had failed in all his hopes and his endeavours, and that he would never see Mar’ya Morevna again. Tears of misery stung at Ivan’s eyes, but he was too tired even to weep. He closed his eyes to blink away the tears, and found it was more comfortable just to leave them shut, and slip down into the darkness of a despairing sleep, and pray to the good God that Baba Yaga wouldn’t trouble to awaken him when she came to take his head…
*
Tsar Aleksandr was working at one of the realm’s great books of law, and hating every minute of it, when the door crashed open and Dmitriy Vasil’yevich ran in. The Tsar was so startled that he dropped his pen and made a blot over two hours work, but that was as nothing to what he had just seen.
The High Steward. Running…
“Strel’tsin! Are you ill?” was all Aleksandr could think to say, knowing even as the words left his mouth that they sounded foolish. The High Steward shook his head, so breathless that even foolish words were beyond him. There was a letter in Strel’tsin’s hand; a crumpled, stained, dog-eared sheet of parchment that normally the High Steward would have been ashamed to bring into the Presence. That it was here now meant something the Tsar didn’t dare to guess at. He filled a wine-cup and held it out, noticing with a little thrill of horror that his hands had begun to shake.
“Someone,” said High Steward Strel’tsin, “has tried to assassinate the Prince.”
Aleksandr blinked, hanging onto that one word ‘tried ’ as a drowning man is said to clutch at a straw, but in his heart the Tsar feared his straw was already weighted down with water. “Is he hurt?” he said at last. And then, in a low, deadly voice: “Who did it?”
Strel’tsin set the tattered letter down, took up the proffered wine-cup in both hands, and drained it at a draught. “Your son is unharmed, Majesty. And I know nothing of who is responsible, except to speculate: who most stands to gain from the death of the heir to Khorlov?”
Tsar Aleksandr Andreyevich stared at his chief advisor with horrified eyes. Then he flung open the door, and yelled for Akimov and the other captains of the guard…
*
Ivan awoke with a start in the cool evening, with dew soaking his coat. The glow of sunset was fading from the sky, but his head was still securely on his shoulders. Ivan ran his hand from neck to crown, just to be sure, and found more resting on his hair than just his hat. Something small and solid tickled as it crawled over the back of his hand, clambered past the wedding-ring given him by Mar’ya Morevna, and settled finally on the first knuckle of his index finger. He already half-guessed what he would see, and the guess was right. There was a queen bee clutching his finger with her six legs, staring at him from the dark eyes that took up most of her head.
“Hail to you, Prince Ivan,” she said, dancing the words as she spoke them in that same high buzz that had surprised him right out of a tree. “Did I not tell you that one day I should prove useful?”
Ivan was barely awake, and his mind was still half-asleep, or else he wouldn’t have started to say, “How could you be of use to…”
And then the words dried up. He looked beyond the bee, curling her antennae with an air of great satisfaction, and out across the meadow.
There was nothing but the green grass. All that expanse of open pasture-land was empty, without a single horse in sight. Ivan closed his eyes and his heart gave a great thump and began to beat far too loudly, like that of a man who, about to kneel under the axe, sees a messenger bearing a reprieve. For some moments he was so busy with breathing that he couldn’t speak, until at last the queen bee, eager and impatient, gave the hoped-for answer to the question that he dared not ask.
“Baba Yaga’s stallion and her mares have been well stung by my people. They are running back towards their stable, each and every one of them!”
The tiny, buzzing voice had to say it three times before Ivan opened his eyes to look at her again. He made the sign of the life-giving cross over his heart, then, smiling, marked it on the air above the bee’s small striped golden body. It seemed only right and proper to bless one saviour with the sign made holy by Another. “Thank you, little mother,” he said. “This is the best help any man could have, for you’ve given back my life and my tomorrow.”
“The service is served.” said the queen bee, and spoke more quietly than he had ever heard before; her dance on his fingertip was a model of propriety, and the small voice now held all the dignity that was proper when one monarch spoke to the son of another. “And if I have given back your life, then it is only right that I repay you for the lives of my children and the food that feeds my people.” She spread her wings and droned into the air, then circled just above him, bobbing with her speech. “It would be wise if you made haste back to Baba Yaga’s hut, Prince Ivan, for it would look better if you arrived with the mares or close behind them, rather than coming late!” And then she flew away.
Wise to make haste or not, Ivan sat where he was on the dew-damp grass for several minutes after the bee had gone. His reason for doing so was simple enough: the relief of having his life saved, never mind it being done by a talking insect, had left him shaking so hard that he couldn’t stand up. He would have been sick if there had been anything in his fluttering stomach to make it worth the effort, but as the shaking and the flutters died away, he began to laugh.
That laughter was as much a reaction as all the rest, and it progressed rapidly from chuckling to rolling on the ground and clutching his aching sides. Ivan had watched the same thing in Prince Mikhail Voronov only a matter of days before, when he’d made some ill-timed comment about having a sore throat without knowing just how very sore that throat had been. A tiny, cool place right at the back of his mind was comparing the two and finding them very much alike. At long last he sat up again, wiping his face and feeling just a little foolish.
It wasn’t simply shock which had sent him briefly into that near-hysterical burst of laughing, but the steadily mounting catalogue of unreality he had to accept as fact. That magic was real he’d known all his life, but to find it played so great a part in all the Russias was something he had never dreamed. That birds and beasts and, yes, insects, could speak to him and he to them was equally beyond doubt.
But good deeds rewarded by good deeds without further cost or question was so far beyond belief that he still doubted it had happened. The world didn’t work so simply, and never had. Or did it? Ivan was as wary of discarding one side as he was of trusting in the other. If he believed that good brought good then he had no further fears for herding Baba Yaga’s horses, since the friends he had made on his journey would come to his assistance as the bee had done.
But if he was wrong he would have laid his neck across Baba Yaga’s chopping-block without lifting one finger in his own defence. Ivan tore up blades of grass and ripped them to shreds between his fingers as he pondered, and at last decided to trust in whatever help God sent: starting with himself, and as much strong rope as he could find. He stood up, dusted off the bits of grass and as much dew as hadn’t already soaked into his coat, and set off back to Baba Yaga’s hut.
It was just as he’d been told: a great swarm of bees had dr
iven the mares and their herd-leader stallion up and down the north end of the meadow – far enough away that the uproar didn’t disturb Ivan’s sleep, which made him grin at such consideration – before finally letting them escape to Baba Yaga, home and safety. Ivan could hear the old hag raving from a long way down the forest path. She was yelling at her horses so loudly that when he paused and leaned against a tree to listen, he had no need to strain his ears.
“Bees?” she screeched. “You were to stay away until after the sun had set, and yet you come running back here with your ears flat, babbling about bees! What do I care about bees?”
“Enough, if they were stinging you!” said one of the horses and, from the sharp flat sound that followed, was soundly smacked for impudence. “What else could we do but run back to the stable?”
“Mind your manners!” Baba Yaga lowered her voice as she regained some control of herself. “Must I tell you how to do everything? Tomorrow when I let you out to pasture, stay far from the meadow. Run instead to the deep lake at the edge of the forest and hide among the reeds along its edge. If any bees cause you trouble, swim out and duck beneath the water as you do with biting flies.”
Knowing that he’d heard all there was to hear, Tsarevich Ivan walked on; but he took care to walk as softly as he could, and not do anything outrageous, since it was plain he was the only person with a good temper in the entire clearing. It was impossible to say who glared at him more, Baba Yaga or her horses. She was red in the face from all her shouting, the horses were breathless and lathered, and when he glanced through the half-door of the stable he could see from lumps and bumps all over their sleek hides that the bees had stung them well indeed.
“Good evening to you, Baba Yaga,” he said politely. “All your mares are safely in their stalls, and I’ve served you for one day of the three.” Baba Yaga stalked out of the stable, ignoring Ivan’s courtesy as he held the door back for her.
Prince Ivan Page 24
