Love to Ash

  She dreamed that night of home. Her city.

  She stood on a plain speckled with stars, and Belnopyl hung over her head. Shops and alleys, towers and walls—only all the lights were snuffed out, and the city was silent. The stars’ waning light made the rooftops and spires seem like teeth, and her city a great maw closing down.

  A familiar presence stood by her side. “You again,” she muttered. Chirlan only smiled. “Why couldn’t it be someone else? Someone living?”

  “You ought to listen to the dead,” the sorcerer spoke as he tilted his head. “They have endless time to see what the living cannot.”

  The hanging city groaned. Vasilisa looked up—and spun out of the way as bricks and tiles fell loose from above. They passed by soundlessly, falling down…or up? Chirlan’s gaze never left her. “The agonies have yet to come. Do you think home will welcome you with open arms? That they will accept you?”

  A roar cut the sorcerer’s words like a knife. Over their heads, whole buildings began to come apart. A spire crumbled, sending bricks and splinters flying past them into the void. Streets disintegrated, bursting silently into falling hails of cobblestone and mortar.

  “They’ll bow before me,” she replied, slipping between the falling titans. “Like all the others.”

  “Those peasants were the few, the meek,” the sorcerer replied. “In their hearts of hearts, fear is what drove them to their knees. Only your Lady Nesha spoke the truth of it—they fear what you are, what you will become. But not all will go so quietly.”

  A great hall fell from above, crumbling apart as it sped upwards. A massive stone tumbled directly toward the sorcerer, and he disappeared beneath the rubble without a sound. Vasilisa recoiled, but then saw a black speck trailing inky darkness across the sky. She followed after Chirlan, speeding faster and faster into the face of the crumbling city.

  “What will you do then?” he called to her as she gave chase, zig-zagging past merchants’ houses, inns and river shacks. “What will you do when your own people hate you?”

  A great shard of glass sliced through the space where she had been a moment ago, sending her tumbling. To that, she had no answer. Vasilisa gritted her teeth and pushed on—Chirlan’s robes danced tantalizingly close to her outstretched fingers, but it was never enough. She resisted the urge to shout.

  “What will you do when the ones you love betray you?”

  “You’re lying.” She caught hold of the sorcerer’s robes, and tumbled with him through the shattering city. “This madness is all your fault. You stole the world away from me—now you want to turn me against those I love? Liar.”

  Chirlan’s laughter rang high and mocking, and from all around. They struck the side of a falling tower, splintering through beams and glass windows. Papers and dust swirled, and the sorcerer spun out of her grasp.

  “Oh, but I am not,” the sorcerer spoke slowly as he danced upwards along the tower. “They will betray you —and all of it they think to do for love.”

  Vasilisa snarled, twisting in midair, leaping forward after him. They exploded through the roof together—twin streaks of gold and black carving through the night sky, falling and rising like birds of prey. “You want me to believe that?” she spat. “That they will turn against me? That love will turn to—”

  “Ash.” Chirlan suddenly stopped before her. A grip colder than ice caught her wrist, and he yanked her toward him. They hung suspended above the ruin for an eternity. His face was too close, too sharp, his grin cruel and knowing. “Love will turn to hate—and then to ash.”

  A surge of fury overtook her. She lashed out, striking him across the face. The impact was like striking water—his form rippled, his grin unbroken. Above them, the city groaned again—and then something else began to fall from the streets.

  Bodies.

  They fell like autumn leaves on the wind. Hundreds, thousands—torn and mangled, crushed and bloodied. Their faces were unrecognizable, and yet she felt a kinship with every one that fell past her. Up and up they fell, drifting into oblivion, dimming the stars at her feet.

  “Love will turn to ash,” he murmured again, releasing her wrist. He fell away into the dark, dissolving like a shadow caught in the wind. “Everything will turn to ash. There is no love for a god, Vasilisa. There is nothing at all.”

  Vasilisa reached for him, for anything, but there was only emptiness. Then, suddenly, she began to fall as well. The yawning starry sky swallowed her, and she could only blindly grasp at thin air.

  “There is only you.”

  Cold, naked terror lanced through her heart.

  ***

  When she woke, she found she was lying beneath a heavy blanket on the floor of the riverboat. Beyond the covered hold, she saw the gray of morning playing dim along the grassy river bank of the Cherech. Having broken free from the grasp of the Gravemarsh, Oleg took control of the rudder as they drifted lightly through the night, keeping close to the banks to guide them through the darkness. Demyan had stood on watch, and it was he who roused the rest of their company, bringing the oarsmen to wake bleary-eyed and sore.

  “Gods above, my arms are killing me.” complained Doru as he woke up with a stretch. “Surely, we must be halfway to Belnopyl by now?”

  That brought a small bark of laughter from the druzhinnik Kirill. “And just how far do you think we’ve traveled, stone-chipper?”

  Only a vague mumble came in reply from Doru—twenty, thirty miles?

  Oleg shook his head. “It’s a hundred miles to Belnopyl from Rovetshi—four days as the fish swims, but we’re no fish. I say we’ve made ten miles through yesterday, and that’s me being hopeful. Might be we can make better time with our sail up, but the wind’s a fickle bitch. So you had best pray your arms don’t pop off, good mason, ‘cause we’ll be needing ‘em for a long while.”

  Doru and the freeholders soon returned to their labor with little complaint, and the dull grey hours passed without event. Soon the trees that ran along either side of the banks began to thin, and then eventually failed altogether. By noon, the land that splayed out before them on either side of the Cherech became flat, with the western side an expanse of vast grassy plains broken by distant woods, and the east a puzzle of tributaries and bogs. Their path along the river itself became difficult once more, as the Cherech fell apart into a messy braid of bars and islands with high stone bluffs.

  The only blessing in the braids of the river was that the fickle wind turned at last in their favor. Polynkin and Austeja raised the sail—a gigantic square of stiff yellowed canvas, bearing no sigils. The wind bore them on steadily through the braids of the Cherech, and Oleg’s careful eye always seemed to find the channel.

  With his maille-veiled helmet laid aside, Vasilisa saw the druzhinnik driving the rudder bore an ugly scar dealt by an ax across an already ugly, pox-scarred face. Of their troop, Oleg was most at home aboard a skiff, second only perhaps to Austeja. Before he found service with Boyar Hrabr, he claimed to have fought against river-pirates on behalf of a dozen different merchants bringing goods up and down the Cherech, though none of the merchants’ names were known to any in their company. Still, his steady gait on deck and his skill at navigation suggested experience enough on river, and that sufficed.

  With the gentle blowing of the wind the freeholders retired for a moment’s respite. Khavel yawned loudly as he stretched his arms. “Gods, let this wind last.”

  Gastya leaned over the edge of the boat and splashed his face clean in the water, sighing loudly. When the peasant went for a second rinse however, his sigh turned into a cry. “Look, bodies! Dead in the water!”

  Polynkin and Kirill rushed to one side of the boat and peered over the edge, and Vasilisa saw them prodding with long poles what looked like a clump of brown flotsam. When they turned it over however, a visage that was pale as milk came up to face the gray sky, broken veins bulging thick with blood.

  As the two druzhinniks gaped another call came up from Oleg who was squinting past a bend in the river. “Smoke - over there!”

  A thin plume of gray twisted and curled up from a spot on the western bank. After a short while, Demyan ordered Oleg to guide them carefully within eyesight of where the smoke rose, and they came into view of a smoldering ruin, and a sullied Elder Tree. A swarm of crows cawed to one another amidst the branches of the great oak, taking their feast upon the bodies swaying from the boughs or those that were splayed out by the shores of the Cherech.

  Austeja’s voice came first, hushed as though she might rouse the dead. “Who could have done this?”

  “Does it matter?” grunted Demyan, his face a grim mask as his eyes flicked across the ruined settlement. If there were any survivors, none dared to rear their heads up from the husk of the building. “I see no dead warriors - it could have been Khormchaks, pirates…but most likely one of our own.”

  The land choked with corpses and ash brought to mind the image of Yerkh, and Vasilisa sensed the same memory playing out in the minds of the freeholders as they looked on dispassionately. From the tower of Balai, the entire realm of Gatchisk had been burned and bled in such fashion. She nodded at Demyan’s words. “In the south, we heard from a renegade boyar that men all across my father’s realm were taking up arms to place a crown on Prince Svetopolk’s head. This was the work of men cut from the same treachery as Stribor, more like than not.”

  To that, Demyan gave a grim shake of his head. “My lady…in war, horrors are dealt out by all.”

  “Of course they are,” spoke Vasilisa. She opened her mouth to speak again, but then sensed the implication in Demyan’s words. “Surely, you aren’t saying-”

  “I am not,” muttered the druzhinnik. “Not entirely. But if your father’s reign is being challenged, surely not all of his boyars would declare for the north. And if it is war…then both sides will need to forage.”

  Forage. There was that word again, that clean, inconsequential word for burnt homes, blackened lands, and the feast of crows upon the innocent. She had never imagined men such as those who were in her father’s court to ever be capable of such things—loud and boisterous as they were.

  But then if this is the work of rebels…then some most certainly are, came the thoughts - almost reluctantly. And if some, then why not all? War turns men into beasts, and men of Belnopyl are no different from those of Gatchisk, or Pemil.

  Vasilisa tightened her jaw, pushing down the anger and confusion she felt bubbling up in her soul. Why? Why had this all come to pass?

  She sat upon a bench and looked upon the smoking ruin, searching her mind. By the time the ruin had drifted long past them all and faded into the distance once more, the drifting souls received no answer, if they even cared to listen.

  The foragers will hang high - this, I promise, she thought to herself bitterly, wondering if the dead could hear her pledge. But then another thought came. But then, who will remain to fight the Dreamers? They are so many, their followers even more, and you are alone, and weak, still.

  The two voices in her mind waged a bitter war of soundless words, and Vasilisa turned her face to the gray skies, wondering where those she had turned for wisdom had done. Mariana, Ilya, her father, her mother…why were they all gone, so distantly far, when she needed them most?

  Belnopyl. Belnoypl was where her destiny lay. She pulled her eyes away from the ever-distant plume of smoke, and turned her gaze north. She imagined the high stone walls, each layer towering above the last, and the keep which sat at the peak of the great hill, the Sacred Hollows. More than ever before, she felt her heart tearing apart in yearning for home.

  Home. How strange the word sounded to her, suddenly. A word equally tender as it was frightening - what lay for her back home?

  What remained?

  ***

  They continued drifting on by the strength of the wind until the day was nearly done, and the company kept a careful lookout for signs of horsemen or warriors tracking them along the banks. But if there were any stalkers or spies, they could not be spotted even by the discerning eyes of Austeja. The night passed without further incident, but the hanging pall of the burnt settlement made sleep hard to find all throughout the dark hours.

  Vasilisa found herself lying with her eyes open beneath the sky as the others slumbered in the hold. The night was dark as ever, but the stars could still be seen through the rolling clouds. As the hanging clouds slowly pulled away to the west, they revealed tiny pinpricks of glittering gold that peered hungrily down over the world. She reached towards the sky, and for a brief moment of wonder felt as though she could truly pull one of the lights from the speckled canvas above.

  Great strength lay in the rolling heavens - strength enough to deal justice as she willed it. Strength enough to protect all that she loved. All she needed to do was reach out a little higher, and it would be in her grasp.

  Just a little higher, just a little farther—the little girl on the rooftop had now become a princess aboard a ship headed for a city whose light had died. She could breathe life back into all that was destroyed…if only she could reach a little higher, and not lose herself.

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  Beneath the light of the stars above, sleep claimed Vasilisa’s mind quickly. When the morning arose, the weather remained gray and overcast, and the westerly breeze failed them. The channels grew narrower as the wound through the braids of the Cherech, careful not to run aground against the stony islands that dotted the waters. As they passed along the western bank of one such islet, they saw a tall stone tower sat atop a bluff, its ascent ringed by a wooden wall.

  As they drew slightly on, she saw the gates of the tower’s wall were breached - and hanging from the threshold a corpse swayed in the wind. “Damn it all!” Demyan growled. “That is Boyar Iazkin, if my eyes do not deceive. What rotten fortune - my lady Vasilisa’s father had raised him to lordship only three summers past…but if this is his domain, then we have made good speed for the city.”

  As the old druzhinnik made a holy sign there was a twang of bowstrings. The whine of arrows cut over the lapping of the waves, and then they fell home. A rough hand shoved Vasilisa to the ground; Demyan stood over her with his shield raised against the iron rain. One arrow struck Polynkin in the arm, another in the deck just between Marmun’s legs, and a third stuck in Kirill’s hood.

  Blinking the haze from her eyes, Vasilisa saw figures running along the western bank, calling with rough voices to one another.

  “River raiders!” Oleg cried, pulling a shaft out of his pauldron.

  “I care not who they are, take us out of their reach!” Demyan roared. “You, oarsmen! Stop cowering and get rowing, damn you!”

  The freeholders did as he bid. They all leaned forward into the oars, exhaustion forgotten as arrows continued to whine over their heads. Kirill stood upon the cabin’s roof with his longbow to search for a target, but the archers on the shore were already beginning to disappear into the woods.

  Their keelboat cut through the water with great speed as the current and wind turned in their favor. But as they drifted to the north past the tip of the islet, Austeja called out: “They’ve a ship of their own, coming around the bend!”

  The raiders’ mast poked up over the islet’s treeline, and as the vessel swung about from the east Oleg groaned. “Gods burst my guts, that’s a bloody Varyazi longship!”

  The ship skimmed quickly downriver - and even at a distance Vasilisa saw they were gaining after them. A dozen shields hung from the vessel on each side, and beneath them were as many oars that churned relentlessly through the black waters. The longship and the men seemed as though they had broken out from the pages of the old chronicles - savage raiders from the north come to pillage and burn Klyazma once more.

  For what seemed a dreadful eternity, Oleg drove them to and fro along the channels, hoping to drive the northerners against a mudbank in their pursuit. But the ship’s captain knew the Cherech as well as the druzhinnik, and the sight of the longship only grew larger and larger as it closed the distance. The men aboard crowded to the bow, and Vasilisa saw a dozen men with shields and axes at the ready.

  “Gods, there’s too many of them…” groaned Marmun. “Twenty-four raiders - at least! Gods above - my lady, what do we do?!”

  Vasilisa sucked in the chilling air through her teeth, wondering much the same. She peered carefully about the stretch of the river they now drifted along. The waters turned sharply to the west several yards on, and as they came around the bend she saw there was another rocky isle that split the river down the middle. Amidst the pale foam of the rapids ahead, sharp rocks thrust out from the sheer bluffs like spears.

  “Will you all follow me, even to death or ruin?” she turned and called to the druzhinniks. “Will you keep faith with me, as you all did at Rovetshi?”

  The warriors stood solemnly to attention. Demyan nodded, “Lady Vasilisa - we are yours until the end!”

  And gods willing, that end will not come today. She pointed towards the oncoming rapids, “Take us through the channel there, and tie down whatever you can! We'll brave the rapids!”

  Oleg squinted at the split in the Cherech, “My lady, the channel there is wide enough for them to follow us through.”

  “That is what I hope.”

  Stroke by stroke they drew closer towards the rapids, and behind them the red sail of the northern longship disappeared around the bend. The dragon's head upon the bow peeked around the corner just as their company was halfway towards the rapids, and Vasilisa saw the Varyazi meant to follow. As the failing wind carried them closer, the ground jerked violently beneath her feet. The roiling waters began to suck the keelboat into the rapids, sending sheets of water spraying up over the edge of the vessel.

  Then the channel claimed them, and she just barely heard Austeja's cry of warning before the roar of the Cherech drowned out all else. The boat rocked violently as the water battered them to and fro, jerking it this way and that like dogs fighting over a bone. The hull screeched as the waves brought them up and furiously down upon dark rocks that sat invisible amidst the foam. Austeja's knuckles were white as they clasped the edge of the riverboat, and over the rapids' roar Vasilisa could hear her hollering directions to Oleg as he steered them against the waters' pull.

  Their vessel groaned and strained beneath the assault of rocks and waves, and all the while water poured down in heavy sheets, nearly drowning them on deck. For a moment Vasilisa feared the northerners would simply laugh as they watched their prey smash themselves apart against the rapids in their escape. But then suddenly, the rocking ceased and the endless spray of foam broke.

  They found purchase on a stretch of calm waters past the rapids, and as they all looked up from their weariness the company saw they had conquered the crossing.

  Behind them, the red sail loomed. The rapids might have tossed their smaller vessel about, but the northern longship was a different beast - its bulk was enough to ward off the worst of the battering waters, and the rocks hidden in the foam would be like tiny pinpricks against their hull. Still, the teeth at the base of the island's bluffs were dangerous enough, and as the northerners drew closer to the rapids Vasilisa closed her eyes.

  She tasted the fear, the trepidation of the souls around her - it renewed the feeling of power in her heart. The waters were a beautiful swirl of silver waves and pale bubbles that looked like shining pearls. She was looking out at the Cherech, and she felt the same strength as she had in the Gravemarsh, though it was already beginning to wax and wane.

  The northerners were wraiths, formed of lashing gray fire as they grunted in unison at the oars. The ship was black as pitch, like the hide of a terrible beast - the carved eyes of the dragon's head on the prow seemed to follow her as she cast her sight out. Then she stretched one hand out and pulled.

  The black dragon-ship rocked unnaturally. The men aboard shouted in alarm. She curled invisible fingers about the hull of the vessel, and dragged it against the raging current, fighting the Cherech. With a cry she lifted the bow high into the air, and then the ship was in the air, hovering free of the waters - heavy as a mountain in her grasp. The pale wraiths aboard trembled, their captain was paralyzed.

  Vasilisa drank in their terror…and then she let them fall.

  Her gasp was drowned out by the cries of her own men as they watched the longship tumble. With a thunderous crack they smashed against the waves and the rocks, and the stone teeth impaled the ship on its side. The mast splintered free of the hull, and the current tore the whole vessel in two. Screams sounded just barely over the rapids as the Varyazi fell into the waters - some poked their heads out from the current, but most did not reappear, drowned or dashed against the hidden rocks.

  When the longship crumbled, Vasilisa joined her followers’ cheering. Oleg lifted her into the air with a bear hug, but set her down just as quickly as he remembered their station. Nonetheless, he was awestruck. “My lady, bloody brilliant! The gods themselves work through you with such magic, Lady Vasilisa! Brilliant!”

  Vasilisa gave no reply, unsure of what to say. She cast her eyes back to the waters, where she saw several Varyazi drifting beyond the rapids. One man was still alive, still fighting to keep his head up and gulping down air and water in equal measure.

  She pointed the raider out to the others. “One still lives, and we need answers. Take him - if he and his kin were ravaging the Cherech, then they must have some idea of what has come to pass in our land.”

  Reluctantly, Demyan extended an oar out to the flailing northerner as Oleg pulled them closer, and the raider instantly clutched for his salvation. With a great heave the druzhinnik pulled the sopping wet northerner to the deck. But before he could even begin to retch, Kirill kicked the bearded fellow in the side, sending him onto his back. Austeja's spear - a short, ugly shaft of wood tipped with a leaf of iron - pricked the northerner's throat as he sputtered and tried to rise.

  Soaked to the bone and shivering, the Varyazi raider did not look so frightening.

  “Who are you?” Vasilisa demanded, setting aside Austeja’s spear. She summoned all knowledge of the Jomnian tongue that she could - all Mariana had tutored her. “Raider. Who are you?” she said again in the raider’s own harsh tongue.

  “Harald.” replied the Varyazhin, his voice slurred.

  “Your people have not struck this deep into our lands since Raegnald,” Vasilisa crouched to meet the raider’s bloodshot eyes. “Why have your people come?”

  “Gold.” spoke Harald. “Plunder. My jarl’s kin called us from across the Shivering Sea.”

  Vasilisa cursed under her breath. Svetopolk, there could be no other. “You and yours came a long way to die. Where did Svetopolk charge you to strike?”

  “Everywhere,” the raider answered through gritted teeth. “All lands south of Hvítsborg are ours to ravage, but not the city. The prince wants to become a king, and where better than the seat of the conqueror’s blood?”

  “I am of the conqueror’s blood, the House of Belnopyl.” Vasilisa muttered as she rose. “How many? How many does he have, Svetopolk?”

  The raider kept his mouth shut. Vasilisa clenched her fists, then took Austeja’s spear and drove it into his leg. The iron leaf punched through and through until he was pinned to the deck. The northman howled in anguish, and she asked again.

  This time, his tongue found new life. “Thousands!” the raider sobbed, his hands clenching feebly towards the spear. “Ten- fifteen! Many! And other things, worse things…”

  He swallowed, as if merely speaking the words were drawing strength from him. “The prince marches with living fire and howling death. No host could stand against him now.”

  Dread twisted through her gut. “Living fire?” Kirill huffed as he kicked the raider in the side. “Speak plainly, damn fool!”

  “I speak the truth!” the northerner howled. “It is the hour of Ragnar?k! Your prince burned thousands of his own at Pemil, and raised Surtr himself from the depths to claim his sword! He marches with ill demons, and a troll with a voice that makes men mad!”

  Vasilisa loosened her grip on the spear. The Dreamers bring powerful slaves, whispered Chirlan in her. Princes, lords…but slaves all the same, no different from the Ormanli. The man speaks closer to the truth that you think - Ragnar?k comes, but it is not his false god that brings it.

  The Bright One, she replied. The one I saw in my dreams, the flaming heart, the king of kings.

  Gandroth, Chirlan replied. A god of many faces. It is Him your prince, your countrymen all feed.

  She felt Vraactan slithering down her arm, along her wrist as she grasped the spear. But even so…you are stronger. Remember what you swore.

  “One last question,” she spoke coldly. “We passed by a settlement downriver, with an Elder Tree - an oak. It was burned. Was that your doing?”

  “N-no…no…no, not us.” the Varyazhin muttered, speaking in Klyazmite as he looked to the others gathered around. But his eyes told the truth his mouth denied. She leaned on the spear, and he howled anew. “Yes! Yes, it was us! Please, stop- mercy!”

  “You hear that, my friends?” she said in the Klyazmite tongue as the raider squirmed. “It was he and his friends who butchered those by the Elder Tree - and how he asks for mercy!”

  “Why? Was it good sport killing good, innocent folk?” shouted Doru into the raider’s face, clutching his oar in a death grip.

  “Kill him, lady Vasilisa!” Gastya cried, and others took up his call, kill him, kill him! Demyan drew his sword and stepped over the Varyazhin, just waiting for the word…but whether by her own, Vraactan, or Chirlan’s feeling, she sensed there remained something else unsaid upon the raider’s tongue, even as he cried for mercy.

  “Silence, all of you!” she roared, and her followers assented. She looked down upon the sopping wet killer. “Speak your truth, then. If only to go to the gods an honest man. Why?”

  The raider shook his head, wincing through the agony of the stuck spear. “We were hunting. On our way south, we heard of an old berserker and some guards loyal to Hvítsborg gathering men across the land to meet Svetopolk in battle.”

  “Killing peasants and petty lords was all part of that plan, then?”

  “Those peasants had hosted him and his men only a few days ago - they needed to be taught…taught a lesson,” the raider gulped. This time, he met her eyes nervously, and did not dare to look away. “That’s what our captain said, my lady, please, I speak the truth.”

  “One last question. This…berserker. Give me his name.”

  “I heard them speak of Ilya, that is all-”

  Before he could finish, Vasilisa ripped the spear from the man’s leg and drove it into his wretched throat. When the northerner ceased his squirming, she let go of the shaft and turned to the druzhinniks, who stood in grim silence.

  “Hvítsborg…that is the northerners’ name for Belnopyl…” she managed, slipping back into the Klyazmite tongue. “An army marches on the city, thousands of men, and at their head is a demon foul and terrible - like that in the Gravemarsh. Svetopolk means to use dark magic and terror to crown himself a king.”

  Vasilisa stepped away from the dead man, and looked north. The walls were ever far - too far. And somewhere, there would be war drums, banners, flames, and marching feet to shake the world. Starving wolves falling upon the wounded bear from all directions - and they were still two days from the city. Two days too far…and Ilya…

  Ilya is alive! Then surely…

  “We cannot afford to linger any longer,” she spoke. Turning to Demyan, she beckoned him, “Set a rotation - rest will be sparing from now on. If we make good time through night and morrow, we might be able to reach the walls before whatever armies Svetopolk has sent are able to cut us off.”

  “What happens then?” came the druzhinnik’s reply.

  I do not know. That was what she wanted to say. Belnopyl had remained barely touched by the devastation the Khormchaks wrought in their conquests, and her father had invested his coin wisely into improving the walls and fortifications further.

  If a full garrison were manning the defenses, she reckoned not even fifty or even a hundred thousand men could take it by storm. But now much had changed in the world - the city was devastated, her father’s best warfighter was in the wind, and spirits who cared little for walls and swords walked among them all. And they marshal armies against me. Why? Do they too know of the secret beneath Belnopyl?

  More questions than answers bred by the minute, and yet all those around her sought were the latter. The path ahead was clear, however. Ilya, or not. Fortune, or not.

  “What happens then? We fight,” she spoke, summoning iron to her voice. “Death or ruin - that was your oath.”

  Demyan gave her a crooked-toothed smile. “From now until the end of days, by Heaven and Mother-Earth.”

  The sails began to flutter once more in the wind, and soon they were off once again, cutting fast through the waters. Sailing ever on, and ever home.