Orson Card - Enchantment

"And may I really, truly choose whether to eat them now or not?"

"Of course! It wouldn't be entertaining otherwise."

"Then I choose to take a nap. If you want to eat them, go ahead, but I'm not interested in doing your bloody-handed work right now."

She almost said the words that would compel him to obey. But instead she laughed. "Play your games with me, my pet. There's one enemy I think you'll want to kill."

"Which one is that?" he asked.

"Why, the one who took your eye," she said.

And she was right. That one he would gladly tear to bits. "When will I have him?"

"As soon as their little army moves against us," said Baba Yaga. "Soon. Now take your nap, my dear."

War

They held a council of war that night, all the soldiers, all the elders of the villages of Taina, Father Lukas, and King Matfei and his family. No one questioned Ivan's right to be there, but he was wise enough to speak only when spoken to. His prestige was high right now, but few would take him seriously when it came to any aspect of war but bombs and Molotov cocktails and the ungainly hang glider they were already building.

It was unnerving to have the king so silent. But every word he did not say was a reminder of Dimitri's treason, so Dimitri, at least, was not the one to fill the gap. Instead, Katerina quietly led out in the conversation, calling upon each man for counsel who seemed to want to speak, and then deferring to her father whenever a question was raised. He wrote his answers to her in a tray of dirt that rested before him on the table, but his writing was slow and inaccurate, for literacy was only somewhat within his grasp.

Of course the command was reorganized, with those most loyal to Dimitri replaced by those most loyal to the king. Everyone understood, and beyond that there was no punishment or recrimination. It's not as if the peasant portion of the army would be expected to stand against anything but other peasants, while knights would fight only other knights.

Then it was time for Ivan to explain what his new weapons could do. To his surprise, there was vehement opposition to the use of fire against men. At first Ivan thought it was some misguided notion of chivalry and fair play that was causing the druzhina to object. Then he realized that the problem was using peasants to attack knights. They didn't like the precedent.

"The weapon is terrible," Katerina admitted, "but remember that we're outnumbered greatly. Our hope is that the grenades and cocktails will terrify the Pretender's peasants into running away. They have no love for her anyway. And as for their knights, putting his weapon in the hands of boys and old men helps redress the balance between her swordsmen and ours. I will give you spells and charms, and so will she, but hers will be more powerful. Shouldn't we use whatever magic we have to counteract her strength?"

When they saw it as magic against magic rather than peasants against knights, the opposition melted away.

The next morning, Father Lukas led the women in carefully loading gunpowder into as many canisters as the smithy could produce. Sergei supervised the boys in making Molotov cocktails, which did not require as much care to avoid blowing off a finger or a hand. And Katerina and Ivan worked with several of the more skilled woodworkers and seamstresses to make the hang glider.

By afternoon, they had something that would fly; but it would not bear much weight. This meant it could only be Katerina who would fly in it, and not in the voluminous clothing she normally wore, either. She carefully announced to the women that in Ivan's world, there was special clothing for those who flew. She would have them make the women's version of that clothing—which consisted of slender trousers, which differed from a man's only in not having an opening through which a man could urinate. Since trousers were not widely accepted as a part of the male costume yet, no one questioned her declaration.

It was this mission that most frightened Ivan, for many reasons. Katerina would be alone, with no one to help her. And while she would be fenced around with charms and spells—many of them patterned after Mother's—there was no possibility that in a face-to-face encounter she could withstand Baba Yaga. Yet someone had to get inside her house to free the captives who were imprisoned there—if any of them survived—and perhaps to do some other mischief, even if it was nothing more than burning down the house with whatever charms and potions the witch might have stored there. What they had going for them was surprise—Baba Yaga had seen airplanes fly, but never an individual person in a hang glider—and also Baba Yaga's well-known custom of riding into battle on the back of an ass, so she could trot from place to place, screaming orders and casting spells.

If only they could be sure that Katerina would even reach Baba Yaga's house. They were counting on warm updrafts to keep the hang glider aloft, that and dumb luck, for it had a long way to go, and not that high a hill to launch it from. It was downhill, generally, all the way to Baba Yaga's lands, but her house itself was in the middle of a fortress high on a hill. To arrive so low that Katerina couldn't get over the wall would be a disaster.

And Ivan wouldn't know whether she had succeeded or failed. If he died in battle, then the question was moot; but if he lived, if they were victorious, only to learn that she had died falling from the sky before ever reaching Baba Yaga's house, it would be unbearable. Why had he ever thought of a hang glider? Damn that little brat Terrel and his kite!

Yet the thought had come to him, and they knew of no other way to get someone over the wall, and once inside Baba Yaga's house, there was no one with a better chance of getting out again alive. So Katerina it would be.

Ivan's part in this battle might be crucial, but his role would still be small. He had command of the boys with grenades and cocktails. Not that they really needed a commander. Their job was to dodge in and out among the fighting men; they were counting on the men to ignore them as unarmed children until it was too late. Each boy would be on his own in this. Ivan's role would be little more than telling them to fire.

Not that Ivan had not volunteered for more important work. A soldier he was not, but he could read, and so he asked to be the man who would stand beside Matfei, reading his instructions as he wrote them during battle and shouting them out for others to obey. In the end, though, Ivan knew that it was impossible. It could not be his voice that the men heard ordering them into battle. Instead, Father Lukas would read out the orders, shout the commands. Even though his proto-Slavonic wasn't as good as Ivan's, his voice was more familiar here, and he hadn't earned the resentment of every man who had ever dreamed of marrying Katerina.

Katerina, of course, questioned whether it was right for a man of God to be so centrally involved in war. Father Lukas only laughed sharply and said, "If Baba Yaga wins, then all my work here is undone, and the name of Christ might not be heard again in this land for centuries. Besides, I carry no weapon, I harm no man. I will do nothing more than read in a very loud voice, which is what I do in church."

There was appreciative laughter at that bit of sophistry. Everyone understood that it was not hypocrisy but exigency. Father Lukas hated war, but the wolf was coming, and these were his sheep.

In the morning, it was agreed, they all would march to war. They knew where Baba Yaga's army was gathered—not far from the large meadow where scouts reported that a big white house on chicken legs was moving back and forth at her command.

Even after the council ended, Ivan and Katerina had no time alone, not for hours; instead they settled into a candlelit room with King Matfei, Father Lukas, and Sergei, telling all that had happened to them in Ivan's country. They had not told a word of it to Sergei and Father Lukas back in the forest, and it was only at the king's insistence that they told it now, for they did not expect to be believed.