Vasya took the food in both hands and tore into it with nothing like maidenly decorum. Her horse finished his hay and made a winsome play for her bread, blowing warm air on her ear until she laughed and yielded. She fed it to him and finished her soup, while her gaze darted like a finch’s about the walls and clusters of buildings, the chapel with its bell-tower.
“I had never heard bells, before leaving home,” she said to Sasha, finally settling on a safe topic. Unsaid things swam in her eyes.
“You will have all the chances in the world, when we have killed our bandits,” remarked Dmitrii, overhearing. He leaned against the kitchen wall, ostensibly admiring the stallion but really, Sasha thought, taking Vasya’s measure. It made the monk nervous. Whatever Dmitrii thought, though, he hid it behind a ferocious smile and a skin of honey-wine. The wine dripped when he drank, the color of his beard.
Dmitrii Ivanovich was not a patient man. And yet the Grand Prince could be surprisingly steady now and again; he waited, without comment, for Vasya to finish eating. But as soon as she put her bowl aside, the Grand Prince’s grin grew downright savage. “Enough gawping, country boy,” he said. “It is time to ride. The hunter becomes the hunted; won’t you like that?”
Vasya nodded, a little pale, and handed her bowl to the waiting novice. “The saddlebags—？”
“To my own cell,” replied Sasha. “The novice will take them.”
Dmitrii strode off, shouting orders; already the men were mustering in the space before the monastery gate. Sasha walked beside his sister. Her breathing quickened when she saw the men arming. Grimly he said, quick and low, into her ear, “Tell me truly—you found these bandits? You can find them again?”
She nodded.
“Then you must come with us,” said Sasha. “God knows we have had no other luck. But you will stay close to me. You will not speak more than you can help. If you have any more idea of heroics, forget it. You are going to tell me the whole story as soon as we get back. You are also not to be killed.” He paused. “Or wounded. Or captured.” The absurdity struck him again, and he added, almost pleading, “In God’s name, Vasya, how came you here?”
“You sound like Father,” Vasya said ruefully. But she could not say more. Dmitrii was already on his horse. The stallion, overexcited, cavorted in the snow and squealed at Solovey. The prince shouted, “Come, cousin! Come, Vasilii Petrovich! Let us ride!”
Vasya laughed at that, a little wildly. “Let us ride,” she echoed. She turned a mad grin on Sasha, said, “We will have no more burnt villages,” and leaped to her horse’s back with perfect grace and a complete lack of modesty. Solovey still wore no bridle. He reared. The men around them raised a cheer. Vasya sat his back like a hero, fey-eyed and pale.
Sasha, torn between outrage and grudging admiration, went to find his own mare.
The hinges of the monastery-gate, rigid with cold, gave a dying wail and then the way was open. Dmitrii spurred his horse. Vasya leaned forward and followed him.
IT IS NOT EASY TO FOLLOW the track of a cantering horse through the snow, not when a few hours of flurrying have half-filled the marks. But Vasya led them on steadily, brow furrowed in concentration. “I remember that old rock—it looked like a dog by night,” she would say. Or, “There—that stand of pines. This way.”
Dmitrii followed at Vasya’s heel with the look of a wolf on a hunt. Sasha rode behind him, keeping a brooding eye on his sister.
The fine, dry powder came to the horses’ bellies, and fell sparkling from the treetops. It had stopped snowing; the sun broke through the clouds, and all about them was golden light and virgin snow. Still they saw no tracks of bandits, only the marks of Solovey’s hooves, faint but definite, like a trail of breadcrumbs. Vasya led them steadily on. At midday they drank mead without slackening their pace.
An hour passed, then another. The trail grew fainter, and Vasya’s memory less certain. This was the part she had ridden in deep darkness, and the hoofprints had had more time to fade. But still they went, foot by foot.
Toward midafternoon, the forest thinned, and Vasya paused, casting here and there. “We are close now,” she said, “I think. This way.”
The tracks were wholly gone by then, even to Sasha’s eye; his sister was keeping the trail by the memory of trees that she had seen in the dark. Sasha was unwillingly impressed.
“That is a clever boy, your brother,” Dmitrii said to Sasha thoughtfully, watching Vasya. “He rides well. And has a good horse. The beast went all night, and yet he bears the boy easily today. Even though Vasilii is only a slip of a thing—too thin, your brother. We will feed him handsomely. I have a mind to bring him to Moscow myself.” Dmitrii broke off and raised his voice. “Vasilii Petrovich—”