OLEG LEFT THE TENT, which he called a ger. Vasya’s mind was racing. Escape? Forget they could see her and walk through the camp until she found her brother? But could she forget they could see him? And what if he was wounded? No, she decided reluctantly. It was better, wiser, to wait until midnight. She wasn’t getting two chances.

Oleg sent a man in to her, carrying a cup full of something foul-smelling. Mare’s milk, fermented. It was thick, clotted, sour. Her stomach roiled. When Oleg himself reappeared, he said, “Doesn’t smell like much, I know, but Tatars march for days on that alone—and the blood of their horses. Drink it, witch-girl.”

She drank, trying not to choke. When Oleg moved to tie her hands afresh, she said, “Oleg Ivanovich, is my brother all right?”

He drew the ropes tight around her wrists, looking at first as though he did not mean to answer. Then he said shortly, “He’s alive, although he might be wishing he weren’t. And he has not changed his story. I told Mamai that you knew nothing, that you were only an idiot girl. He believed me, although Chelubey did not. Be wary of him.”

At midnight, Vasya told herself, trying not to shake. We must only survive until midnight.

Oleg pulled her outside the tent, into the rising sun, and she quailed. In broad daylight, the encampment was bigger than a town, bigger than a city. Tents and horse-lines stretched as far as she could see, half-blocked by scrubby woods. There were hundreds of men. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Her mind would go no higher. There were more horses than men, carts on every side. How would Dmitrii muster an army to match this one? How could he possibly hope to defeat them?

Oleg’s horse was a stocky, big-headed bay mare. Her eye was kind and intelligent. Oleg slapped the mare’s neck with affection.

Hello, Vasya said to the bay, with her body, in the speech of horses.

The bay flicked a dubious ear. Hello, she said. You are not a horse.

No, she said, as Oleg fastened the rope about her wrists to his saddle and vaulted to the mare’s back. But I understand you. Can you help me?

The mare looked puzzled, but not unwilling. How? she asked, and jolted into a trot at the touch of Oleg’s calf. Vasya, trying to think of a way to explain, was hauled stumbling along with them, praying that her strength would hold.

SHE SOON REALIZED THAT Oleg was keeping her close in part to humiliate her, but also to keep her from the nastier elements of an army on the march. Perhaps he’d believed her more than he appeared, about having been sent from Dmitrii Ivanovich. Perhaps he was even not so loyal to the Tatar as he appeared. The first time someone threw horse-dung at her, Oleg turned with a deceptively soft word, and she was not troubled again.