C. Cherryh - Yvgenie

Get up, keep moving, the ghost insisted. He recalled that Ilyana was in some dreadful danger, that he had let her go and lost her and that he dared not go back, because he was dying, he much feared so, dying finally and forever, when he had died truly that night in the flood, in a woods in which the dead did not rest. He wanted not to steal strength; but he wanted not to die, either, or to wait for the wolves, and he hauled himself up on his arms and his hands to try to get his feet under him—with the sudden feeling—perhaps it was the ghost—that there was help to be had, that it was very close now—

An arrow hit the bank, among the dead leaves, beside his hand. He flung a look over his shoulder at riders coming down the opposite leaf-paved slope, and tried to run and sprawled again on the leaves in the weakness of his legs. He rolled over and looked at them as they came—god, they were the tsar’s men, not his father’s; and that made him hope—

Although why they should be here in this woods, he had no notion at all. He only stared at them as they came. He had no strength to flee them, not even to stand on his feet to face them.

They stopped, their captain’s horse standing half astride the rill, the mustached captain looking down at him grimly from that vantage as two others rode across to dismount on either side of him. Their armor and their manner recalled Kiev, and streets, and sane places where the Great Tsar ruled, not wizards. They would kill. They would do anything they pleased, in the tsar’s name. But they might be here on some other cause, they might even be here hunting his hunters.

“Yvgenie Kurov,” their captain said, as the horse took a step closer, looming over him. “Where’s the girl? Where did you leave her?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and the two men on either side of them came and hauled him up by the arms. Why should the tsar care? he wondered. Why should the tsar take a hand in my father’s troubles, or want to find me or her?

The ghost said, Because your father is dead, poor young fool, with his servants, the second wife, and all his house, and they intend no traitor’s heir survive—nor any question of an heir, born or unborn. The Kurovs are gone, the tsarevitch is scrambling for his life, and heads will roll if some pretender comes out of the woods: that’s what I hear in them. I’d not fall afoul of Eveshka’s ill will. But no one told the tsarevitch that, when he tried to switch dice on Ilyana’s father…

He was dazed. Their grip hurt his arms. He found no sense in what the ghost was saying, and the captain of the tsar’s men leaned close to ask him and seized him by the hair, making him look up. “Where is Nadya Yurisheva?”

The name echoed strangely in his ears, recalling— recalling—

—a talk behind the stairs, vows exchanged besides the witnessed ones, with the bride they had contracted for him: they had conspired to try to love each other, his bride behind her walls, himself within his father’s treacheries and the Medrovs” climb to influence. Until someone had whispered the fatal secret, a taint of wizardry—’Where is she?” the captain asked, shaking him, but he saw only forbidding thorns, and ghosts, and the fire and Ilyana writing in her book. He had no idea how he had become so lost, or where he had lost Nadya and fallen in love with a wizard who wanted him for a ghost’s sake— For Kavi Chernevog, who had sustained his life and who with a confidence beyond courage was not afraid of these men, no. Kavi wanted them, he felt it coming—

“Let me go!” he pleaded with them. But the breath and strength that came flooding through his arms was theirs, all the arrogant violence they had brought to this woods. Two horses bolted, free through the woods. Go! he wished them, heard the captain cry, “Kill him!” and shut his eyes and wished not, wished all the horses free: it was his own mortality, that, and the ghost did not fight him on that point. It was too well satisfied with the life it had in reach, and with every gasp of breath came anger at his victims. He had tried all his life not to hate, had kept his father’s wicked secrets, poured all his love into a man whose only passion was cleverness and strength, and fear in the eyes of his dogs and his servants and his sons…

But that was over. They were gone now, his half-brothers were dead, his stepmother must be dead: everything he knew und understood was gone—he was drowning, and he caught at last at what he could. Branches, lives—it was all the same.

Finally he was sitting by the water with breath in his body, warmth where cold had been, and three dead men beside him. He had not intended it, god, he had not set out to do murder—it was the ghost. It was all the ghost—

—Well, well, well, something said, then, that was not harmless, either, that reeked of sunless cold and coils.—A boy. A boy with the smell of my old master all about him. My kind, dear master—is it help you want?

Fear washed over him—he had no notion of what, or why, only that the ghost knew its serpent shape, and that killing had drawn this creature here as surely as rot would draw ravens.

You’ve only to wish me, the creature said. I know what you need. I can supply everything you need.

It shivered up the streamside like a passing cloud. It brought cold where it passed. And stopped where a woman stood, a woman Ilyana’s image.

A woman he had murdered once. And rescued from magic. And lost again forever through his jealousy.

He said, in sudden despair, “—Eveshka.”

And the creature who smelled of dark and murder said, suddenly behind him, “The years do turn. Don’t they turn, old master?”

Something was ahead of them, not the mouse, Sasha thought, and said, quietly for Nadya, who was holding only to the saddle on this level ground:

“I’m hearing something. Someone. I don’t know who.”

“Is it my father?”

He shook his head, gazed through the sunlit forest, along the hills behind them. “It’s—” It was something out of the ordinary, not like the thoughts of deer or the earth-smelling habits of bears. He stood up in the stirrups and looked over his shoulder.

“It’s not near us. It’s north of here. Too far to hear—it feels like someone. Several someones. Like voices you can’t hear. I don’t like this.”

“The ones we’re looking for? Could it be?”

He shook his head. “I want them to ignore us. I want them not to see us.”

“I’m scared.”

“We’ve Babi. Wherever he is.” He reached back a hand without thinking, patted a bare knee with half-felt embarrassment. He did not like the feeling from the woods. “It’s not safe. But I’ve nowhere safer to put you.”

There was a little tremor in her voice. “My father said stay with you.” And she added, “I have a knife in my boot.”

“We don’t want them that close.” He had his own misgivings about putting her afoot and out of his sight—misfortune and magic tending to strike at the most vulnerable point. “Don’t be afraid. Just think about the wind, think about green leaves, that’s the sort of thing Missy thinks about.”

She thought about walking houses and wolves and dreadful wizards. She tried to see the leaves instead, and admire the sunlight: everything was brighter in the woods, the whole world was more dangerous and sharper-edged than she had ever imagined. She thought, I shouldn’t be alive, I shouldn’t be thinking thoughts like this—

Yvgenie rode all the way from Kiev for me—and he’s in trouble and we’ve got to save him; but I can’t even think about what to say when I see him. I never felt with him the my I feel now—I never imagined anybody like Sasha and it’s stupid! I can’t tell whether I’m shivering because I’m scared to death or only because he touched me…