Exhaustion weighed on my shoulders, growing heavier with each step. It had been over a day since I had last eaten, and my mouth was so dry. I wanted to go down to the river and drink from the flow, but I sensed I’d never be able to sip it now without tasting Vanya’s blood. The river’s purity was sullied in my mind forever.

We reached a break in the woods and found ourselves at the edge of a stony ridge. In the distance, clouds fought to engulf a castle built at the summit of a tall, pine-encumbered peak.

“Eyry Castle,” I whispered, before movement below drew my gaze downward.

A convoy of horses, wagons, and marching soldiers trundled down the road that crossed through the valley. The procession was followed by six armored machines.

“Tanks,” Vanya said. “They use a Yezmirskiy motor, but they’re imperial in design.”

Standing in the shadow of the pines, we watched the group pass. The horsemen’s purple flags, adorned with the crossed sword and wheat sheaf, marked them as Otzvuk.

“What are the tsarists doing here?” I asked.

“I don’t want to know,” Vanya said, and gently tugged on my wrist, drawing me toward the cover of the forest.

I looked back just as roiling storm clouds engulfed the setting sun. The road darkened like an incision cut into the rocky skin of the earth, and the soldiers were reduced to droplets of blood or ink.

After Kupalo, the sight of the Otzvuk’s indigo banners should have made me sick with anger, but that was before Lieutenant Dronov and the river. I didn’t know what we were fighting for anymore, or for whom. The only important thing now was saving Galina and Mikhail.

Some distance in, we came across the ruins of an izba. It had been many years since anyone had lived there. In the owner’s absence, nature had had her way with the home, ensnaring its hewn-log walls in ivy and planting moss and saplings across the dirt floor. The oven was just a pile of bricks and plaster.

Vanya and I walked to the well by the overgrown swine pen. I pushed off the lid, the boards splintering into pieces the moment they struck the ground.

A bucket trailing a chain lay beside the well, an enameled ladle not far away. Vanya lowered the pail into the hole until we heard a splash, and then he hoisted it up again.

He held the ladle out to me, and I drank from its cup. The water ran down my throat, so cold, pure, and delicious. I offered it to him next, but he shook his head.

“I’m not thirsty.”

“You have to drink.”

Hesitantly, he took a few sips. I sensed from how he grimaced that it hurt to swallow, or the water tasted horrendous to him. Even though he remained close enough for me to touch, I felt the distance between us growing wider.

“Look, blackberries,” Vanya said, pointing to the bramble crawling over the fence. “Why don’t you sit down and rest while I pick some?”