Chelubey blanched. His sword-blade dipped. “I warned them,” he said. “Oleg and Mamai—those fools. I warned them.”

Vasya gave him a dazzling smile, without warmth. “You shouldn’t have told them I was a girl. Then they might have believed that I was dangerous.”

Pozhar’s eyes were embers, her mane, smoke and sparks. A touch to her flank drove the mare into a rear. She lashed out with her forefeet, and even Chelubey’s nerve broke then. He fled, leaped to his own horse’s back, shot away. Pozhar, half-maddened, sprang in pursuit. Vasya curbed her after a few bolting strides. Her blood was up; she had to fight her own urge, as well as the mare’s, to ride Chelubey down. It was as though the Bear’s presence goaded them both to rashness.

Well, he could goad all he liked; Vasya would make decisions for herself. “My brother,” she said, seizing control of herself, and Pozhar was persuaded, with difficulty, to turn.

The Bear looked mildly disappointed. Ignoring him, Vasya dropped to the ground at her brother’s side. Sasha was curled up, arms wrapped around his body. Blood showed on his mouth, on his back, black in the firelight. But he was alive. “Sasha,” she said, cradling his head. “Bratishka.”

Slowly, he looked up. “I told you to run,” he croaked.

“I came back.”

“That was disappointingly easy,” said the Bear from behind her. “What now?”

Sasha tried to sit up, made a small sound of pain. “No,” Vasya said. “No, don’t be afraid. He helped me.” She was feeling her brother over gently. The blood on his hand and back had gone cold and sticky, and his breath was short with pain, but she could find no fresh wounds. “Sasha,” she said. “I must go into the camp, and find Vladimir Andreevich. Can you stand? You can’t stay here.”

“I think I can stand,” he said. He tried, struggling. Once he put his weight on his injured hand and made a sound not far from a scream. But he got himself upright, leaning heavily on her. She staggered under his weight; her brother was barely conscious.

Perhaps that was a blessing, considering how he’d feel about her allies.

“Will you take him up on Voron?” Vasya asked Polunochnitsa. “And hide him from the Tatars?”

“You want me to nursemaid a monk?” Polunochnitsa asked, disbelieving. Then her expression turned curious. It occurred to Vasya that a chyert might be persuaded to try any unusual thing just to relieve the boredom of eternity.

“Swear you won’t hurt him, or allow him to be hurt, or frighten him,” Vasya said. “Meet us here. We are going to get my cousin.”

At that Sasha croaked, “Am I a nursing babe, Vasya, that she must swear all those oaths? Who is this?”

“Travel by midnight would awaken the sight in even a monk,” put in the Bear. “That is interesting.”

Reluctantly Vasya answered Sasha, “Lady Midnight.”

“The one who hates you?”

“We came to an arrangement.”

Midnight gave Sasha an appraising look. “I swear it, Vasilisa Petrovna. Come, monk, and get on my horse.”